


Release

by Anonymous



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A "just forget the words and sing along" approach to both canon and historical fact, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Angst, Fallen Angels, Found Family, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hell is considerably softer than it is in canon, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Recovery, She/Her Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), Slow Burn, Solomon's Temple, They/Them Pronouns for Dagon (Good Omens), Torture, Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:07:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 57,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25009708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Aziraphale is caught, sans flaming sword, during the Great Heavenly Audit that precedes the Great Flood, and is locked away with the Watchers and a few other angels who have very clearly disobeyed, but also have yet to Fall. From there a small series of dominoes begin to fall, which becomes a cascade around the time King Solomon is building the First Temple.Heaven looks down upon the demons enslaved and thinks "this is a good idea", while Hell, being comprised of demons currently being enslaved, thinks "this actually really sucks". From there things wildly diverge. Crawly becomes Crowley in a Hell that feels indebted to him for their rescue, and also finds to concept of slavery utterly horrifying. Aziraphale, meanwhile, is forced to labor in a Heaven that views him as an increasingly disposable object. It's only when Armageddon is less than five hundred years away that they meet again, after an impatient Heaven drops Aziraphale off in Hell.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Hastur/Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 603
Kudos: 375
Collections: Good Omens Kink Meme Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In case there was any doubt: yes, this is being written for the kink meme.

Let’s start with Solomon, even if Solomon wasn’t the start of things. But in terms of media res, Solomon is as good a place to begin as any.  
  
Now, Solomon was well known for many things, one of which was his ability to enslave demons. God had granted him that wisdom- the wisdom to bind evil and bend it to good ends- but She had not, for whatever reason, granted him the wisdom to recognize the evil in his own actions. She hadn’t granted anyone else the wisdom to recognize the evil in them either. It was up to each individual to watch and judge for themselves- and when the evildoer in question was a king with the apparent backing of God, such judgments tended to be passed quietly and without effect.  
  
So, Solomon. Using the demons he enslaved, he built the Temple, and the palace complex upon Ophel, and built up the cities of Ezion-Geber, Palmyra, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. There were demons in his libraries, dispensing knowledge of far-off lands and long-ago histories. There were demons serving in great dining halls, and his throne room, convincing powerful men to give up their daughters to him, and convincing powerful women to surrender their power to him. There were demons in his bedchambers. Some said that they were there to further compel the women Solomon coveted. That was only sometimes true- sometimes a demon was summoned to his bedchambers because they themselves could be so completely _compelled_.  
  
Upon this scene was cast the watchful gaze of Heaven. Specifically, the watchful gaze of Gabriel, for all that Solomon was widely considered to be Ariel’s charge. He saw the ends: the hallowed Temple, the gleaming palace, the wretched forms of demons, subjugated and no longer able to fight back. He dismissed any doubts about the means no matter who it came from, and thought upon a problem they had back home.  
  
The problem in this case was a group of some two hundred and fifty angels who did not behave as angels ought. The former Watchers, mostly, but there were a few other troublemakers in amongst their ranks, a certain sword-mislaying Principality, for example. God had granted Solomon wisdom, and in his wisdom might well lay the solution Heaven had been seeking for nearly two thousand years.  
  
So Heaven watched, and did nothing but give tacit approval with their watching, and Gabriel began to make plans.  
  
And into this scene was unwillingly drawn many of the demons of Hell. Crowley was one of them yes, still going by Crawly at the time. Just as important- perhaps even more important- so was Hastur.  
  
Crawly, naturally was able to get free first: the Serpent of Eden, the Originator of Sin, the First Tempter, a wily old fiend was she, and one of the other things Solomon was best known for was being _weak_ for women-shaped beings.  
  
It took time, of course. Time, and a great many other things she would have been reluctant to part with under less dire circumstances. But with her very freedom at stake she was highly motivated, and in a mere matter of years she had convinced Solomon that she loved him utterly, and would not run if given the choice.  
  
Given the chance, of course, she ran straight back down to Hell, and gave her report to Satan, who proceeded to do bloody fuck all about it.  
  
But she was free. Crawly had been flogged and fondled and _fucked_ in every way possible in order to get that freedom, and she had done it herself, on her own. She didn’t owe anyone anything for it.  
  
Somehow she ended up requesting an audience with Duke Ligur anyway, an audience that was only granted because her request consisted of the words “I know where your husband is.”  
  
That part took more still. More time, certainly- their progress was slowed by at least a month when Ligur first caught sight of Hastur and went off half-cocked and got himself discorporated to boot. But, after more than three years of more careful skulking and surveilling and furtive contacting, they were finally able to act.  
  
There was Nebarius, bound to the unconsecrated entryway of the Jerusalem yeshiva, a favorite amongst the students there. He gave voice to their doubts in the guise of posing an argument for them to consider: didn’t Solomon seem too friendly with the pagan kings of Tyre and Egypt? Was he not prone to excesses beyond what might be understandable for a powerful man to indulge in? Was not the methods he used to make examples of the demons under his power a tad too much? Did it not fly in the face of the prohibitions against cruelty and the responsibilities of mercy prescribed by the Law they’d been taught to hold almost as highly as they held the Lord?  
  
There were Ashtoreth and Namaah, for all intents and purposes two uncommonly beautiful women in a harem of a thousand such women, from the once-powerful who regretted their choices to the always-powerless who regretted their father’s. Teeth gritted, the two demons worked to create something like a unified front. To their surprise, this was much more easily done than they would have supposed: the work came more naturally, and the other women were more than willing, once given a degree of certainty about their plan of attack.  
  
There were Harut and Marut, reduced to conjuring to entertain Solomon’s guests, to tantalize them with their first tastes of the otherworldly powers he has at his command. It was a relief to have a way to bend their task to their own escape, to have some idea which words might lead to their escape. They didn’t worry about being caught- for some time now, one of their conjurations has been to make it appear as though Solomon was present and listening to their concerns, when, in truth, he had lost his taste for ruling long ago.  
  
Not that he’d done anything so responsible as abdicating, of course. He had gone through some trouble to ensure that no one would want his son and heir on the throne, even. Being a king- and in many respects THE king, favored by the God Almighty Herself had its perks: a chiliad of women who would never say no to you, and would claw at one another for your favor; an army of soldiers whose loyalty was without question; the wisest of sages and prophets to tell you that you were, of course, right, and had every right; and a bevy of enslaved demons who could never disobey.  
  
“He has another son,” Asmodeus told Ligur, the very moment Ligur was able to get him alone. As he was nearly always bound in Solomon’s bedchambers, it took some doing to arrange a meeting, involving a small pouch of gemstones, a great quantity of oil, and one very confused kangaroo. “One not raised in Israel, but beyond his influence.”  
  
“Where the fuck is Sheba?” Ligur asked Crawly later that night, and for the first time in a long time, she threw her head back and laughed.  
  
Good old Makeda, sharp as anything. More than twenty years ago now, when Crawly had been freshly caught and bound, she’d made a show of carefully worded submission, and let Solomon think that he’d seduced and conquered her, when actually all he’d done was pass a convoluted and stringent test to become her sperm donor. Her son by Solomon, Menelik, favored her strongly in cunning and charm. Solomon couldn’t get rid of him fast enough, sending him away with bribes of gold, oil, incense, and the eldest sons of every lord who might oppose him.  
  
It doesn’t take more than a little nudge from Ligur- _Do you really want to leave the protection of God behind? Do you really want to leave your families at the mercy of a tyrant with divine protection?_ \- for these new not-quite-exiles to suggest to their new King that he take the Ark of the Covenant as well.  
  
Once the covenant providing Her protection was removed from the Holy of Holies, all Hell was free to break loose, and it did, with more than a little help from humanity. The Great Sanhedrin gave everyone reasons and justifications and rationalizations to rebel against their king, and then stepped aside. The foreign traders and emissaries read the room and left it, content to renegotiate better terms with the victors once the dust has settled. The wives and concubines came out from the harem, knives hidden up their unwieldy, fashionably wide sleeves, poison baked from cosmetics ready to be distributed should the worst come to pass.  
  
More numerous than either of these groups were the slave laborers. The descendants of the Gibeonites, who had lived with and intermingled with the Hebrews for so long that neither group particularly knew why they shouldn’t be considered the same people. There were those captured in more recent raids from the lands of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Siddon, and Hattusa, who were divergent in customs and language but united by a common longing for home. There were Hebrews, fallen into debt or dishonor, who had been promised their freedom upon the next Jubilee year, which somehow had failed to arrive as appointed for decades now.  
  
And, number roughly one for every five humans, there were demons. They wielded shamirs the same way their human counterparts wielded pickaxes, hammers, and the odd khopesh taken from a fallen guard at first. And then, as bindings were undone, they began to transform, and to summon fire and weaponry more suited to the task of rebellion.  
  
Some were surprised by their own lack of desire to turn against the humans they’re fighting with. Others, who perhaps had clearer memories of a time when they weren’t demons but rather rebel angels felt mainly a sense of intense vindication. _This_ was the thing they had thought they would be doing, when they first Fell, and it was nice to remember they had rebelled against things they had thought were wrong, rather than because rebelling had been termed the wrong thing to do.  
  
Ligur, a Duke to Crawly’s not even a mayor of a small municipality, was supposed to kill Solomon with Hastur at his side- ideally to help with the deed, but so long as it was plausible for him to share in the credit it would amount to the same thing. It would have helped to rehabilitate their reputations, which were now sullied by Hastur’s enslavement and Ligur’s subsequent worry. In return making this possible, Crawly would get the ability to spit on Solomon’s corpse and a significantly reduced workload and longer leash for her work on Earth.  
  
This plan didn’t last very long into the night, for the simple fact that Hastur wasn’t in amongst the slave laborers as he was meant to be. Instead, he’d been sentenced to death some two weeks prior and was now being slowed roasted to oblivion on the consecrated ground of the Temple.  
  
“You do understand that consecrated ground will burn you, right?” Crawly hissed.  
  
“It won’t kill me, it probably won’t even seriously hurt me, if I’m quick enough,” Ligur said.  
  
“Or you could get one of the humans to-”  
  
“That would take too long. This isn’t a debate,” Ligur snarled.  
  
“Isn’t it?” Crawly asked.  
  
“Just go kill him,” Ligur ordered. “He needs to die, so I can torture his soul again and again for all eternity.”  
  
Cautiously, he put a foot down on the Temple floor, hissing in pain as he did. Gritting his teeth, he took another step, standing fully on consecrated ground.  
  
“Go!” he yelled, and Crawly went off in the direction of Solomon’s palace while Ligur began to sprint between the pillars of Boaz and Jachin.  
  
The plan continued to fall apart when Solomon was not in his bedchambers.  
  
“Then where is he?” Crawly asked, exasperated.  
  
“I don’t know,” Asmodeus replied. He had Solomon’s ring clutched in his hand. It was a significant source of the king’s power- insofar as calling Solomon a king was accurate at the moment he was being deposed- and one of his concubines had switched it out for a fake yesterday. “But he’s trying to summon me, and I can’t- I can feel him reaching for me, and he’s so angry.”  
  
Asmodeus had been a Prince in Hell, outranking Hastur and Ligur and very nearly everyone else besides the likes of Beelzebub and Satan himself. You didn’t attain that kind of rank in Hell by being nice, you attained it by being absolutely terrifying, the stuff of nightmares. And Asmodeus was obviously terrified out of his mind.  
  
Crawly could relate. She didn’t want to, but she could.  
  
“So go to him then,” Crawly snapped. “I’ll go with you. I’ll hang back and hide, you’ll do the grovelling apologizing please-don’t-hurt-me bit, and once his back is turned we’ll take him out.”  
  
This plan also ended up being quickly discarded. Partially this was because Solomon was in his own personal Holy of Holies, a small grotto beneath the hill whose waters and ground were consecrated with enough for not only to nullify their powers, but to potentially kill them if they got wet. Mostly this was because of what Solomon had down there, given to him as a gift by the Archangel Gabriel himself: two angels, not quite yet Fallen, Samyaza and Azazel.  
  
The not quite yet Fallen part was important. They were bound, and beaten, but they weren’t Fallen, and therefore their powers would still work, if only they could be freed, and if only they would want to attack Solomon.  
  
Crawly hid, and waited, and when the first flash of hatred played across Azazel’s face, she took her chance. The runes binding the angel in place were holy things, but her body was unholy, maybe even more so when she took the form of a serpent. It would, or so she hoped, cancel things out for a bit. She put her odds of survival at ‘decent’ and her odds at living long enough to watch Solomon die at ‘pretty good’, and was off like a shot, aiming her body at the loderune in the hopes of blotting it out.  
  
That plan worked, as it happened.  
  
Solomon’s blood desecrated the grotto, and the water too, once they rolled his body into the pool. That left the two angels and the two demons in what probably should have been a standoff on equal ground but was, instead, a mildly awkward sort of milling around.  
  
“So,” Crawly said, once she’d leaned over and spat on Solomon’s corpse. “What are you two doing down here?”  
  
“It’s a long story,” Azazel replied. “It’s a long story, and I’m so- I’m so tired.” He sighed and added more quietly “I’m so tired of it all.”  
  
That was when his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed on the floor, convulsing.  
  
“What?” Samyaza cried, kneeling down beside him.  
  
“He’s Falling,” Crawly explained, shocked. She had been in too much pain to pay much attention to what they had looked like as they Fell, but there was no doubt in her mind as to what this was.  
  
“What?” they cried. “Why? Why now, why would-”  
  
If Crawly had been thinking more clearly, she might have warned Samyaza against asking questions. As it stood, the thought didn’t occur to her until their eyes rolled back and they joined Azazel on the floor.  
  
“Who are they?” Ligur asked, once Crowley and Asmodeus had made it back to the surface, newly-Fallen demons in tow.  
  
“New recruits, just Fell,” Crowley said. He propped Samyaza’s body up against the ruins of a nearby stone pillar and then more or collapsed in the dirt himself. Man shaped again- he would have done it sooner, shed himself of the skin Solomon had so loved to touch, but he’d wanted Solomon to be able to recognize him, to know that the being who had brought his death to him was the self-same one he’d once believed he’d tamed. “Is he alright?” He jerked his head, indicating the bedroll behind Ligur where Hastur was resting.  
  
“No,” Ligur said bluntly. He shifted uncomfortably, and Crowley caught sight of Hastur’s feet, so completely blackened and charred that he got the impression that if he touched them, they would crumble into ash.  
  
“Will he be?” he asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” Ligur admitted.  
  
As a result of these events, Hell developed a strict aversion to slavery and all the assorted ills therein. And Heaven? Heaven, which had _problems_ to make examples of?  
  
Heaven really did not develop such an aversion at all.


	2. Chapter 2

For those first few weeks in Hell, Aziraphale felt like he was perpetually holding his breath, waiting for someone to notice what he was, or to actually act like they knew, or even just acknowledge it in some way. Make some passing reference, some glancing remark, even a snide comment, just- something, anything, so he’d have some idea of what rules were in place. He wasn’t sure how anyone could have missed it- Gabriel had thrown him down at Beelzebub’s feet and proclaimed it in his great booming Voice for all to hear. Glass had shattered, and more than a few of the assembled demons appeared to start to bleed from their ears, and then he’d gone, leaving Aziraphale alone and kneeling amongst the wreckage.  
  
“I thought you told him to keep it quiet,” someone hissed.  
  
“I did,” someone else snapped.  
  
Aziraphale hadn’t known what to do. He knew what he _should_ be doing: offering his apologies, suggesting that he get a broom to clean up the mess, anything that might mitigate the coming punishment. But it was hard enough as it was, trying to keep from sobbing uncontrollably, trying to keep kneeling upright instead of falling onto the floor. The wound on his side had reopened again during transit, and he just- he couldn’t-  
  
He’d been abandoned. It wasn’t even worth the effort to keep him in Heaven any longer, not when he was bound to Fall sooner or later, not with somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred years to go before Armageddon. He would only be a security risk, if they kept him around to listen to their plans for much long.  
  
That probably shouldn’t have stung as deeply as it did.  
  
“Get him up,” the second speaker hissed, and two sets of hands grabbed him under his arms and hauled him to his feet.  
  
“Shit, he’s bleeding,” one of the men who had a hold on him whispered.  
  
“Sanctimonious cockwaffle,” spat the second speaker, and now that he was more or less upright Aziraphale could see that it was Beelzebub, the Prince of Hell herself. “Get someone in the meatsuit department to stitch him up.”  
  
They dragged him away. He was trying to cooperate, really he was, but he couldn’t quite make his legs move correctly.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words slurring together, sounding like ‘umorry’ more than any proper word. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I-”  
  
“Shut it,” said the demon under his left arm. Aziraphale shut it.  
  
“You don’t need to apologize,” said the demon under his right arm. Aziraphale waited, but no lecture on how little his excuses or moaning or whatever it was that was wrong with his tone was forthcoming.  
  
The ‘meatsuit department’ was set up a bit like the infirmary in Heaven. Aziraphale braced himself for a long wait-  
  
-and what would happen if he discorporated, now that Heaven had washed their hands of him? Would he still end up back in Heaven's reception hall? Would he be sent to wherever discorporated demons ended up? Would he- _could_ he- simply cease to exist?-  
  
-but that turned out to be unnecessary.  
  
“Clauneck!” snapped one of the demons hauling him. The demon sitting behind a podium upon which was planted a giant, creaking tome stood and looked him up and down, their gaze assessing. Aziraphale fought the urge to curl in on himself. It would do him no good, and he might very well be punished for trying to hide himself.  
  
He hadn’t been given over to any demon in particular, as he understood it. He’d just been given over to the untender mercies of Hell at large. Until someone stepped forward and claimed the responsibilities and privileges of being his handler, he owed obeisance to everyone.  
  
“You were created a cherub,” said Clauneck flatly, and Aziraphale promptly lost the battle to curl in upon himself until the gash on his side reminded him that it was a bad idea physically as well.  
  
“He’s _bleeding_ ,” snapped the two demons holding him up as one.  
  
“Yes,” Clauneck agreed placidly. “That is a more pressing concern, if not more notable. This way.”  
  
“Oi!” yelled a demon, sitting on one of the spindly chairs along the wall that seemed to be made of bones. “What about me?”  
  
“You are a hypochondriac, Muriel,” replied Clauneck, their tone still serene. They didn’t break their stride, and Aziraphale was dragged along after them. “That diagnosis will not change.”  
  
“Wanker!”  
  
Clauneck didn’t deign to reply. They merely lead them along a narrow corridor, lined with doors marked in a variant of Old Celestial Aziraphale could barely make out. He would later learn that Infernal was read from bottom left on up, rather than top right on down, and that the vowel diacritics were entirely different.  
  
Therefore, he experienced a moment of confusion when he was dragged through a door seemingly labelled Seebreeb, only for Clauneck to greet the demon inside as “Barbas.”  
  
“Fuck,” Barbas replied, hurriedly switching out her freshly bloodstained apron and gloves for ones which were still stained, but at least dry. “Get him on the slab.”  
  
Aziraphale was placed on the slab, and what followed was a few moments of intense agony, as expected. It was only a few moments, however: Barbas worked quickly. He supposed he should be grateful. Raphael could stretch Graceless healing sessions out far beyond what time it should have taken. She’d once taken an hour to heal a papercut, and Aziraphale had felt like his finger had been lit on fire and was burning straight through to the bone the entire time.  
  
It would only hit him later that demons had no Grace with which to heal, and speed was the only mercy they could offer. At the time, he’d simply accepted the pain, given himself twenty seconds to recover, and then wiped his eyes.  
  
“Thank you,” he said quietly. He sat up on the slab, waiting cautiously to see if he was to be given further direction. Raphael would have wanted him to gush and fawn with gratitude, but he’d been told to shut it once already, and he could take a hint. She would have also eventually cut him off with a pointed remark about showing her how grateful he was, which would be his signal to get down on his knees and under the hem of her chlamys and put his mouth to better use on whatever she had between her legs at the moment. She liked to experiment. The most recent barbed tentacle thing had been … unpleasant.  
  
There were four in the room, which wasn’t ideal but wasn’t the worst either. He’d had worse just an hour or two before, when seemingly everyone other angel from the second sphere on up had come to see him off, as it were. So long as everyone had reasonably sized and shaped genitalia and one or two of them would be content to wait it shouldn’t be too bad, if that’s where this was heading.  
  
He shivered in spite of himself. The barbed tentacle thing had been _deeply_ unpleasant.  
  
He sat, and he waited. He found himself worrying at the hem of his tunic, and forced himself to stillness. _Thou shalt not fidget_ might as well have been commandment number one, so far as he was concerned. Gabriel in particular had found it annoying.  
  
One of the demons snapped, and Aziraphale flinched, but all that happened was that his tunic which had been going stiff with drying blood (mostly his) and other bodily fluids (mostly not) was suddenly clean- and his body too.  
  
“Thank you,” he said again, since clearly gratitude was warranted here, though historically being miraculously cleaned didn’t end well for him.  
  
He continued to wait. None of the demons made any moves, and neither did they speak.  
  
Then Barbas cleared her throat. “Are you experiencing any pain?” She asked.  
  
It took Aziraphale a moment to realize that he was the one being addressed. “No, thank you. I mean- that is, no and thank you, I, um-”  
  
“Well good, that’s my part done then,” Barbas said impatiently. Aziraphale flinched and nearly apologized, but she was still talking and he wasn’t keen on finding out what the consequences for interrupting someone were. “If there’s nothing else, I do have other work to do.”  
  
“And your shift is nearly over and you’re eager to return to your mate,” Clauneck added in what Aziraphale was coming to realize was their usual serene tones.  
  
“And I have work,” Barbas insisted.  
  
“But mainly,” Clauneck continued. “Your wife is a succubus who is newly returned from Earth, and you wish to copulate.”  
  
The two demons who had dragged him in began to snigger, while Aziraphale quietly boggled. _Wife?_ Could demons marry?  
  
Marriage was sacred, of course, which would seem to preclude demonic participation, but more than that, it was a sacrament meant for humans. Angels never married. They never needed to. They had the Host for companionship, God for love, and if they had baser urges that was what the likes of Aziraphale were for.  
  
“Sure, fine, whatever,” Barbas snapped. Aziraphale flinched again. “Laugh all you want, but don’t do it here.”  
  
“Come on, you’re not off the welcome wagon yet,” said one of the demons who had dragged him into Barbas’... office? Did this qualify as an office?  
  
It didn’t really matter at the moment, he supposed. He’d finally been given an order, albeit indirectly, and he hurriedly got to his feet, and then followed the two demons who’d brought him and Clauneck out.

When they passed through the antechamber, Clauneck resumed their post behind the podium, while Aziraphale continued to follow the two demons who had brought him. The antechamber was a great deal more crowded than it had been when he'd entered, he noted guiltily, with a lot of the demons now waiting to be treated pressing bloodied cloths to their ears.  
  
If he’d caused such a fuss in Heaven he would be paying for it dearly right now. He braced himself, but no one took a swing at him, no one tried to trip him, and there wasn’t anything worse than an odd grumbling whisper. One or two of them even seemed to give him sympathetic looks. Fellow slaves, he would have presumed, but there was nothing about their manner of dress or the way they held themselves that marked them apart from their peers.  
  
They made it out unscathed, and Aziraphale continued to follow his escorts down the hall. He snuck a few glances at them, here and there, though they didn’t seem inclined to notice. One of them was pale and very tall who walked with an odd gamboling gait and had a toad of some description perched on his head, while the other was dark and merely tall, who walked more quickly and had a chameleon wrapped around his shoulder. They seemed very comfortable in one another’s space. Aziraphale wondered if they were friends, or perhaps were even married as Barbas was, before giving himself a shake. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that there were two of them, and two at once was an easily manageable affair, particularly if they hadn’t exerted the effort and given themselves some particularly outlandish genitals. He probably wouldn’t even have to manifest anything, unless he was told to, then of course he would have to, and-  
  
And all of that was besides the point too. He wasn’t sure what the point was yet- the auction block, being branded with the sigil of whoever had won him at auction, being taken to a secluded corner of Hell to be fucked in relative comfort and privacy, or merely going back to where he’d been dropped so he could clean up the mess made by his arrival all seemed equally likely- but worrying about the logistics of sex that hadn’t even been demanded of him yet was definitely not it.  
  
He kept his head down, and his mouth shut, and he followed the two demons closely, never more than five steps behind and never less than three. Whatever was about to happen wasn’t within his power to change, but he could at least try not to exacerbate things by being deliberately obtuse. He could be obedient, and if nothing else he could try to start things out on the right foot by showing it.  
  
They walked for what felt like more than an hour. The two demons ahead were talking quietly, but Aziraphale was quite adept at eavesdropping, and the noise of Hell had just enough lulls to it to be sure that they were speaking, at least in part, of what to do with him.  
  
“We can’t keep him, he’s not a pet.”  
  
“I’m not suggesting we keep anyone, much less keep him like one of your feral cats.”  
  
“Hey now. My cats don’t require living space, just the odd disemboweled mouse from time to time.”  
  
They passed by the entrance to some large chamber, the inhabitants of which seemed to be laughing themselves into a frenzy, which blotted out their conversation for some time.  
  
“The peace treaty is holding, it’s not like the Ottomans are in the middle of invading again-”  
  
“Yet. They’re not invading again yet, and you know that’s not everything. Bleeding Tahmasp and his bloody third layer...”  
  
“If that doesn’t end up like the mamalik in Egypt, I’ll eat my eyeballs.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean it’s fun now, or will be any time soon.”  
  
“It wasn’t fun in Egypt.”  
  
They passed by another doorway which opened to the sound of screaming. Aziraphale flinched. Was that some kind of punishment square? A training hall? Or one of the public use areas?  
  
The screaming cut off abruptly and as they passed the still-open door and Aziraphale caught sight of rough one hundred or so demons all clustered around in a semicircle.  
  
“Right,” one demon was saying, distinguished by their red robes and position in front of the other demons. “Now, if half of you could be less sharp, and the other half of you less flat, then-”  
  
The door closed, and before Aziraphale could quite add ‘demonic choir practice’ onto his list of options he realized that he was nearly eight paces behind, and hurried to catch up.  
  
If either demon noticed his momentary lapse, they gave no sign of it.  
  
“Come on. You saw how he came in. He’s going to be a mess for years, at least.”  
  
“Yeah. I know. Do you really think I forgot?”  
  
“I didn’t mean-”  
  
“He’s going to need someone who understands.”  
  
“I don’t disagree, Hastur, but I don’t think that can be us.” They came to a stop outside of one door in a corridor that was overly crowded with them, and the demon not named Hastur unlocked the door with a snap as he turned to Aziraphale. “This is you.”  
  
“Right,” Aziraphale replied, his face burning with humiliation. “Yes, thank you.”  
  
The room was small, but furnished. There was a bed, which did seem to confirm his theory as to why they’d brought him here. There was also a vanity, upon which was a rather spotty mirror and a bowl full of cloudy water, a chest at the foot of the bed, and a wardrobe braced against the opposite wall from the bed. Aziraphale looked between the wardrobe and the chest and wondered uneasily what they might contain. Hopefully, neither of them were meant to contain him, he didn’t do well in that kind of confinement at all.  
  
He stepped inside, and then off to the side, so that the demons could enter behind him, but neither of them made any move to do so.  
  
“We’re not going to hurt you,” said Hastur.  
  
Aziraphale felt himself relax in spite of himself. He didn’t yet know if Hastur was the sort of lie about these things, much less what his definition of hurt was, but the fact that he wanted Aziraphale to believe that he wouldn’t be hurt was generally a good thing. Pretending to enjoy what was happening to him had its own pitfalls, of course, but it was better than the alternative.“Thank you,” He was saying that a lot today. Hopefully they didn’t find it too annoying.  
  
He waited. The demons remained outside the door.  
  
“Right well, until we know where you’re going, this is home for you,” said the one who was not Hastur. “You make yourself comfortable. Dagon should be by in a few days to give you the news.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded, and having a lack of anything better to say, replied with “Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” said Hastur after a beat of silence, and then pulled the door closed. If it locked, then the lock itself didn’t make any kind of noise.  
  
Aziraphale stared at the door for a long moment, and then he turned around, taking in the room for a second time. Was this some kind of test? Were they waiting to see if he would sit down on the bed without explicit permission, so they could punish him? It wouldn’t be the first time. Indeed, that had been a very common way to be welcomed into a new handler’s quarters in Heaven. A way to assert their authority, make sure he knew which of them was in charge (them) and how far he could push it (not at all). He hadn't thought Hell would have the patience for such mind games, for some reason, though.  
  
Or… or had he been given an order? Was _make yourself comfortable_ supposed to mean that he was meant to arrange himself appealingly on the bed, to await Dagon’s pleasure? Was he meant to be working himself open, manifesting a sex, keeping himself aroused? A few days was a long time for his corporation to sustain such a state, but he’d done it before. Every time Raziel had been his handler he’d kept Aziraphale chained to his bed for the entire forty-nine years of the service he was entitled to, and he’d been expected to keep himself in a state of readiness at all times.  
  
He just didn’t know what was expected of him here, and he had no way to know. He’d known all the rules in Heaven. He’d been there when most of them had been written, serving as a secretary when he was fortunate and kneeling at one or another Archangel’s feet when he was less fortunate. It had been more than twenty five hundred years since this had started. It would have been impossible for him not to get used to how Heaven operated in that amount of time. Hell, on the other hand… all he knew of Hell was a nebulous and terrifying _worse_.  
  
He knew absolutely nothing of how things operated in Hell, he realized. Heaven’s system had been banged out over the course of some centuries, and it had been long after the Fall. Hell was bound to do things differently. Heaven had rotations for their slaves: you spent forty-nine years with your handler, and then you had a year off in the barracks to recover before being placed up for auction again. There were common rooms and courtyards for mingling in the barracks, but in recent centuries Aziraphale had preferred to spend the time sleeping, if he hadn’t sustained some kind of grievous injury that he needed to rebuild his strength from. It was better for everyone if he tried not to make friends. And then, every seventh cycle, you’d get a public use rotation, which was exactly what it sounded like: short term contracts open to those in the second sphere as well as the first, slightly less short term contracts for use by departments as a whole, and mandatory seven years minimum in the pillories for anyone who wanted a try. You could also end up in one of those public use rotations if you didn’t sell at auction, but Aziraphale had always sold. There had been too few of them when the system had started for there to be public use cycles, and by the time enough defective angels had been identified to meet the demand, he’d been the only ‘original’ who had yet to Fall- he was experienced, well-trained, and not in need of much breaking in.  
  
Did any of that happen here? Were there rotations? Were they regular rotations, lasting for some fixed period, or did they only last as long as their handlers wanted, no matter how short or long that might be? Did they have public use slaves? Did they have _personal_ slaves? Would he just be expected to serve everyone’s every desire in perpetuity? He hoped not. Juggling a single department's worth of desires had always been immensely stressful, and there had to be exponentially more demons in Hell than there were angels in a specific department of Heaven.  
  
If he was assigned a handler, then how was it done? Heaven had auctions, but the auction process had changed over the centuries. It used to be done in person, but it had proven too great a spectacle. People had gotten rowdy, as even those who weren’t of the first sphere and therefore couldn’t become a handler attended and seemed to enjoy the event. These days the auctions were all done on paper without any of the slaves that were up for sale present, and at the end of your rest year one of the Powers would come to issue you your new brand and uniform before handing you over to your new handler.  
  
Did they do uniforms here? He hadn’t noticed anyone wearing anything that signaled their servility on the way over. Did they do branding? It seemed like they must. Barbas had provided whoever would do the deed with a blank canvass to work with. Where would they mark him? It varied from handler to handler, in Heaven. His last brand had been on his back, just above the jut of his right hip- Sandalphon had taken great pleasure in cutting it from his skin earlier today, and continuing to cut until his right side had been so much bloodied meat.  
  
Aziraphale was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was breathing loudly and quickly, so he stopped and held his breath for a count of twenty before letting it out slowly. Then he sank to his knees. He’d never been punished for going to his knees- or, at least, he’d never made a coming punishment worse. Hopefully, Dagon would be pleased by his show of submission, and if they wanted to partake in any sexual activities, then, well, starting with his mouth was generally a good plan. It moved things along more quickly, and it made sure there was some lubrication in the form of saliva if they wished to penetrate him.  
  
Yes. This was a good idea.  
  
The stone was rough and oddly warm, where the floors in Heaven had been uniformly smooth and cool, but it made little difference. He’d knelt in enough broken glass to know that his legs would go numb in a matter of hours no matter what he was kneeling on.  
  
Aziraphale took another deep breath, and began to count: one, two, three…  
  
At forty-three thousand, two hundred he would pinch a bruise into his wrist. Another forty-three thousand, two hundred seconds after that he would pinch another bruise, crosswise. He’d repeat the process every forty-three thousand two hundred until he had pinched fourteen little xs into his wrist and the oldest of them had begun to fade, and then he would scratch a line onto the back on his hand and start back at the first x once more. He could keep count like that for years, if he had to.  
  
_A few days,_ he reminded himself. _He said it would only be a few days._ He forced himself to keep his mind on the count, and only the count: forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven...


	3. Chapter 3

Prior to the days of Solomon, neither Heaven nor Hell made any moral judgements as to the practice of slavery. As to the treatment of slaves by their masters, yes, and to the method of their procurement; and as to the deference paid to masters by their slaves, too. But slavery itself was just something that humans did, like arrange themselves into different nations, develop schisms over religious scripture, and divide themselves over who had inherited the largest collection of shiny rocks.  
  
Heaven changed its stance first. Slavery became one of those things like war and conquest which might be terrible in the wrong hands, but might lend weight to a moral argument in the right ones, as opposed to being one of those things like raping and pillaging that was at best an excess to be frowned upon. This had very little effect on their policy on Earth, as war, conquest, and slavery would tend to be the provenance of the powerful along with raping and pillaging for a long while yet, and those chosen by Heaven tended to end up in power in a hurry.  
  
The effect it had on those living in Heaven itself was another matter entirely, and a story for a later time.  
  
Hell’s shift came next, and it came more gradually.  
  
Perhaps the first thing to be done when explaining this is to explain Hell’s relationship to evil. While all are in agreement that Hell is aligned with evil, the precise nature of this alignment was, in those early years before there could properly said to be years, a matter of debate. Were they meant to do evil, to encourage evil, or to punish evil? For a while there, the answer was officially the second option, with a broad range of tolerance of the first, which could be written off as setting a bad example if pressed.  
  
Once things had finished shifting around in the wake of Solomon’s death, the answer was different. For one thing, there was a general acknowledgement that the three answers were not mutually exclusive. For another, there was a new official agreement that the emphasis should be placed on the third option.  
  
It started just after Solomon’s death, when the demons who had been enslaved returned to Hell. Satan had not come to their aid. First Crawly and then Ligur had acted without orders. They all knew this, and Satan knew it too.  
  
So it came as a surprise to many when Crawly- the demon who had engineered their uprising and escape, and well they all knew it- bowed low before Satan and greeted him with “My Lord, I have done as you bid.”  
  
Crawly spun out a tale from his knees: of how Satan had entrusted him with the safe return of his stolen people, and how he hoped that the Dark Lord was pleased with the return of all those who survived, and that he would be equally pleased with the newly-Fallen among their number.  
  
Ligur was silent during all of this, supporting Hastur’s weight while trying desperately to make it look like Hastur was not in need of support. No one spared them a second glance, too focused on the Serpent. For all that they had worked closely together these past few years, and for all that he knew he and Hastur both owed him a great debt, it was the first time he’d looked at Crawly and recognized him not as a disposable underling or a useful pawn, but as a valuable ally.  
  
That will be important later- but for now the only important part is that the lie worked as well as it was able. It created a feasible facade, a common narrative for Hell to cling to without directly challenging Satan’s authority. Crawly has seen what happens to those who challenge the Dark Lord’s authority. It’s not a sight he’s eager to see again.  
  
So, that was that, then. Status quo preserved- except for, of course, the thorny matter of slavery. That had to change, for a number of reasons.  
  
The first reason was simple: fear. Solomon had enslaved tens of thousands of demons. While this amounted to a fraction of a percent of the total population of Hell, it was also not an inconsiderable amount, especially when you consider that Solomon targeted high ranking demons, especially when every demon had lived in terror of being summoned and bound for a time.  
  
Especially when, though it would take centuries to be spoken of openly, many demons did in fact have loved ones who worried about them.  
  
From this fear came the second reason: the effects of that fear on the volatile politics of Hell. Some of the higher-ranking demons who had been enslaved by Solomon stepped down, as gracefully as a demon ever did anything- Asmodeus, for example, gave the title of Prince to his mother, the human soul Lilith, who was a bit cannier about the different ways lust might rule a body and how much or little punishment it deserved. Some were forced out, and never recovered their former power- Naberius, for example was never again a marquess of Hell, and ended up a baron under the aegis of Dagon, and the only thing more infuriating than the loss of his power is how happy he found himself, working with all the heretic philosophers and librarians that Dagon collected. Some quietly slipped away to Earth, leaving their posts empty and ripe for the taking, such as Harut and Marut, who’d grown curious to see some of the lands the ambassadors they’d been forced to entertain had come from. Some found they were able to keep their position, but only with help- and, surprisingly, discovered that being helped was not the horror they’d been imagining it to be- Ashtoreth and Namaah were two such demons, who emerged from their ordeal with the startling remembrance of having worked together towards a common goal before there were demons at all.  
  
They weren’t alone in their remembering. That was the third reason- after somewhat more than three thousand years of being damned, many the denizens of Hell were just now remembering why they had chosen to go against Heaven in the first place. They sought one another out, those who had remembered in slavery first, and then those who had never quite forgotten next. They made a quiet little network of support for one another. That network didn’t accomplish much, not right away, but it was there, and it was another thing would be important later.  
  
The fourth reason was the simplest one: if Heaven had decided that slavery was good, then the demons of Hell had an obligation to discourage it. There was no ambiguity about this, no guesswork. Not only had God’s chosen king been the one enslaving demons, but the two newest demons were able to confirm in no uncertain terms that Heaven had taken up the practice itself.  
  
They took up their former nicknames as their new names: Uzza and Az. Dagon, who had prepared for more angels to Fall centuries ago, oversaw their intake interviews.  
  
“There are more than two hundred angels enslaved in Heaven now,” Az said, staring directly ahead, eyes unseeing- and not because his eyes no longer had irises either. “I think there’ll be more.”  
  
“Gabriel called it a _pilot program_ ,” Uzza said bitterly. “He picked out Az because he was our leader, and then he picked out me because I told him not to pick Zira, and then _Sandalphon_ picked Zira and the Archangels, they-” Uzza cut themself off abruptly, pressed their fist into their mouth, not quite able to muffle the sound that way, now that they had tusks.  
  
“Zira?” Dagon asked.  
  
“He’s a Principality,” Az explained, when Uzza showed no sign of being able to continue. “Not one of the Watchers, but he’d been on Earth as long as us. He knew all the best stories. And he didn’t- he didn’t judge, for what we did. Our families. He didn’t judge us for that.”  
  
Dagon ended up doing all of the intake interviews for the angels who would not-infrequently Fall in the coming centuries, and the name Zira came up in roughly a third of them. The Watchers had adored the guy, very nearly adopted him as a little brother. The rest of the Fallen had a more split opinion. Some were angry at him, for managing to cling to his Grace for so long. Others were more pitying.  
  
“I chose to Fall, I think,” said one of the new demons about a century back. Koh, he’d decided his name was. “I wasn’t thinking of that at the time, exactly, but I did think _There’s no way Hell can be any worse than up here_ and I’m pretty sure that’s what did it. That’s what let me finally escape. Zira? He'll never do that. He’s convinced that the problem is him. I once heard Gabriel claim that he was the one they needed to come up with the whole slavery system for, and I’m pretty sure he only said it because Zira was right there listening to him.”  
  
Dagon had collected quite a file about this Zira. When they placed it side by side with the file provided by Heaven for Aziraphale, there was a lot of overlap. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that Hell had their own separate file for the former Principality Aziraphale. It started with Crowley’s report from the garden. Dagon themself had written a lot of the rest.  
  
Before the Flood, they’d had a city dedicated to their worship: Mari. It had been a stronghold of theirs, and a major source of their power. Heaven had sent agent after agent to try to break them from their followers. Most of them had tried to preach outside their temple, and had been run off. One had tried to attack the temple itself, which had been kind of funny, actually. And then they had sent Aziraphale.  
  
He’d been clever enough to avoid the temple entirely. Dagon hadn’t even known there was an angel in their city until their own priests had started to ask if they shouldn’t open trade relations with the blessed nomadic Sethians. It had taken them some time to track down where the idea had come from: the bakeries, of all places. Some pale stranger had taken to hanging around, helping with the labor and spreading all these tales about God’s followers. He’d gone to business somewhere down south, or so the bakers claimed, but he’d assured them that he would be back shortly.  
  
The Earth flooded two weeks later, a torrent of holy water that drove Dagon and every other demon back down to Hell- save for Crowley, who’d had the nerve to hitch a ride of the Ark. No had heard from the Principality Aziraphale since, apparently because he’d been arrested for…  
  
Dagon peered down at the top of the file Heaven had provided. He’d lost his sword. And then successfully lied about it for the next thousand years. Satan below, accursed be his name, but that was one Hell of a con to pull.  
  
Most of the rest of the file Heaven provided was useless. There was a thick wad of paper detailing his various reprimands, most for small to virtually nonexistent infractions no one in Hell would even bother noticing- though the escape attempt of two thousand years ago was interesting, as was the demotion he’d received just after Eden, in a sort of viscerally horrifying way. And the skills section? Ha! They seemed to think that they would want to use the angel for sex, which was a laugh. They had a whole department filled with willing beings devoted to sexual lusts, why would they feel the need to resort to rape? It wasn’t what the emphasis was placed on, but the file did say that he had spent a great deal of time dealing with paperwork and filing, though. Dagon could use that- they knew exactly where he would be able to fit in.  
  
They collated the three files into one, and set it aside for the next three days. Aziraphale would need to rest, all the new recruits did.  
  
That was what they expected when they came to visit Aziraphale’s quarters: a new recruit, bruised but angry, someone who from the sound of things was a little sly and had a keen attention to detail. They were, therefore, completely unprepared to open the door and find the angel kneeling on the floor with several x-shaped bruises pressed into his wrist, still dressed in the slave uniform of Heaven, the only sign that he’d noticed their entrance at all the sudden tensing of his shoulders and the stink of fear in the room.


	4. Chapter 4

“Seriously? You’re not even on the bed?”  
  
Aziraphale flinched, just barely holding himself back from a full-bodied cringe. The demon who had entered his cell was Dagon, there could be no mistaking it, not with the film of silver fish scale cast over their face, nor the many too-sharp teeth in their mouth. Dagon, if he’d managed to parse what he’d been told correctly, was to be his new handler. Of course, he clearly hadn’t parsed what he’d been told correctly or else he would be on the bed. “I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. “I wasn’t- I wasn’t sure what was permitted, so I just- I guessed. Wrongly. I mean, obviously I was wrong, I’ll just- I’ll do that now.” He stood, his legs wobbling alarmingly, like he’d been kneeling on the floor for months rather than days.  
  
“Don’t bother,” Dagon commanded, and Aziraphale froze in place.  
  
He kept his hands at his sides. He couldn’t fidget. This was a bad enough situation as it was, he didn’t need to go about making it worse.  
  
Dagon sighed. Aziraphale flinched again, and wondered if further apologies would appease them or merely increase their ire.  
  
“Right,” Dagon said. “Here’s the deal: Upstairs sent over a list of your skills.”  
  
When it became obvious that they were waiting for a response, he asked weakly “In bed?”  
  
“No,” Dagon snarled, which was almost a relief. He couldn’t even imagine what they would say- he’d never gotten consistent feedback for those particular duties. Michael had considered him an utter disappointment in that area, while Raziel had found him so skillful that he’d barely been able to keep his hands to himself for more than a few days at a time. Most of the others had been clustered apathetically somewhere in between the two, caring less about his ability to perform various acts and more about how he reacted to having acts performed on him. Gabriel had generally wanted him to act at the very least grateful, preferably enthusiastic, and to compliment him on his prowess during and after the act- when it was done in private, at least. Raphael had always wanted him to start out acting with the enthusiasm, but it was permissible for him to start crying and begging in the middle so long as he didn’t freeze up. Sandalphon had liked the crying and begging- he didn’t seem quite able to rise to the occasion if he tried to take it stoically, which always led to a monumental explosion of temper. Once, early on, Aziraphale had tried to fake some enjoyment of the act. Sandalphon had reacted so violently that he’d discorporated him, and then commandeered the Quartermaster’s office so he could fuck him in their celestial forms while the healers were still trying to scrape enough of his corporation off the floor to reconstitute it.  
  
How would one even go about writing all of that down?  
  
“Look,” Dagon said, shaking him out of his head and back into his present predicament. “There are clothes in the wardrobe. Pick something out, I’ll be back in ten minutes to discuss your assignment then.”  
  
They left him alone again, but at least he was now alone with a clear timeframe and a set of orders. He opened the wardrobe, which did indeed contain a wide variety of clothes from various locales and time periods, all of it dark-colored and not in particularly good repair, though they did at least seem clean. Aziraphale scanned the contents for a moment, before his gaze came to a rest on a pair of loosely-woven breeches.  
  
He’d never worn leg coverings like those before. They hadn’t been invented yet by the time of the Great Audit, and afterwards there hadn’t been much opportunity to change his clothing, much less try on new styles of it. It wasn’t against any rules he didn’t think- they would simply have gotten in the way of many of his handlers, and even those like Uriel and Remiel who didn’t have such urges didn’t seem the need to break with the tradition that had created. All of his uniforms since slavery was introduced to Heaven consisted of a simple tunic, hanging down to anywhere from mid-calf to just below the knee, and little else.  
  
_Is this a test?_ he wondered, not for the first time.  
  
If it was, then it was probably the sort of test he wasn’t ever going to be able to pass, and he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. If it wasn’t, then he was only wasting time. Mind made up, he went about clumsily pulling on the breeches, trying desperately to recall the precise steps Gabriel took when he put on this type of garment. He also traded out his tunic for a sort of long-sleeved jacket with a collar that stuck up over his neck. It came down to just under his knees- hopefully, even if the breeches were taken from him, the jacket would be allowed to remain. It was embroidered, and even though half the embroidery had seemingly come undone and was hanging from the cloth in so much loose thread, it was still the nicest article of clothing he’d been provided with in a very long time.  
  
Before he could quite come to a decision as to whether or not to kneel again, the door opened and Dagon reentered.  
  
“Good,” they said. “Now, I’m Dagon, Lord of the Files, and as such I maintain the Archives of Hell.”  
  
“The Archives?” Aziraphale asked, wincing at the naked hope in his own voice. He really shouldn’t be so transparent about his flights of fancy, he knew that, it was just- the _Archives_. His time in the Archives of Heaven had been almost happy. And he was good at that sort of thing, he knew he was, because the only other places he’d spent more time assigned to was Gabriel’s office and Gabriel’s quarters. Not even Raziel had purchased his contract so often.  
  
“Yes, the Archives,” Dagon confirmed. “Follow me, I’ll show you where you’ll be working.”  
  
Scarcely daring to believe his luck, Aziraphale followed them out of the cell. _Don’t get too excited,_ he cautioned himself. _You don’t know yet what your duties will be. This is Hell. They’re bound to do things differently than in Heaven- to do things worse than in Heaven- and even Heaven didn’t let you anywhere near the scrolls at first._  
  
But then there had been a glut of paperwork after the Assyrians had had conquered the Kingdom of Israel, and he’d been unchained from the breakroom to help with the sorting, and the Director, the Throne Harahel, had noticed him, and simply let him continue to do the duties of a junior sub-librarian rather than chaining him back up when the paperwork had subsided. If he could just have an opportunity to prove his worth…  
  
“The place was a mess when I finally forced Dantalion to hand it over to me, and it’s a mess now,” Dagon said. “I need all the help I can get to make the place presentable.”  
  
“Would those be my primary duties, then?” Aziraphale asked, doing a better job at controlling his tone of voice this time around.  
  
“Those are your only duties,” Dagon replied, and Aziraphale nearly tripped over his own feet. That couldn’t possibly be right, could it? Even in Heaven’s Archives he’d had other duties: tidying the breakroom, escorting around visitors from the first sphere and attending to their whims, and attending to the whims of Director Harahel and those under her command, within reason. The whole department had had a voucher system in place to better ration the demands on his time, for pity’s sake. Maybe Hell thought of things differently here? Maybe anything else that might be asked of him would be considered a right they had over him, rather than a duty he had to perform.  
  
Conscious of the risk of tripping again, he decided against asking for clarification for the time being. He simply followed his new handler along as they pointed out various areas of interest between the cell they’d left behind and their destination- though why Hell had taverns and coffeehouses, much less why Aziraphale would need to know about them was quite beyond him. Maybe Dagon liked to indulge, and would be expecting him to pick up their orders? Uriel had always had him pick up her mana and ambrosia rations from the mess hall.  
  
Uriel had also never once fucked him- no interest in that area at all. Maybe Dagon was the same way? Despite his apparent misstep with the bed earlier, they weren't looking at him with desire, and they weren't making any allusions to sex at all.   
  
_Don’t get your hopes up,_ he reminded himself again. _This sounds like it has a chance to not be completely terrible, but it’s just that: a chance._ He was quite painfully aware of his own ability to fuck things up for both himself and others, and equally aware that he was flying blind.  
  
He knew a little of Dagon. Nothing particularly vital to his current circumstances. He’d gone undercover in one of their cities, before the Great Audit. Mari had been well-run and prosperous, as far as he could recall. And he’d had a little chat about the assignment with Crawly over a game of aasha before he’d headed off. The demon had advised against a direct confrontation.  
  
Good Lord, he hadn’t thought of Crawly in an age. He hoped he was still slithering around somewhere. He’d been such a dear, considering the circumstances- though he doubted Crawly would look so kindly upon him now, after everything.  
  
Eventually, they arrived at the Archives of Hell, which smelled quite strongly of mildew and dust. Aziraphale had to suppress his corporation’s need to sneeze several times. It was a labyrinth of small tunnels lined with doors in various shapes and sizes: he noticed some along the baseboard that were only inches high, and there were still others that somehow spilled out onto the ceiling.  
  
Aziraphale did his best to memorize the path as they went. _Left turn between the porthole and the double doors. Left turn again between the two orange doors that looked like part of a double set that had been set into opposite walls. Right turn between the gilt door and the set of three identical tiny ones._ If Dagon was expecting him to get supplies for them, then he’d need to know where the exit was.  
  
“This is where you’ll work,” Dagon said, opening one of the more regular doors.  
  
His first impression was that the room was a mess. This impression did not lessen when Dagon snapped and the lamps along the wall were suddenly lit.  
  
“Everything in here needs to be cataloged and sorted,” Dagon explained. “The room’s index is-” They frowned, and snapped again. A giant book bound in what looked very much like heavily tattooed human skin shuddered out from beneath one of the piles in the center of the room, triggering a slight avalanche.  
  
Dagon did not sigh as they handed Aziraphale the index, but they gave off a very strong impression of having done so nevertheless.  
  
“The index,” they continued. “Make a record of everything you find in here. Try to sort it out in some way which makes sense and put it all onto some shelves.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded. Yes. He could do this sort of work.  
  
“I’ll be back in a week to check on you. Any questions?” They asked.  
  
“I have a few, if I might ask?” Aziraphale replied.  
  
“Yeah, that’s kind of why I asked if you had any,” they replied. Aziraphale blushed, but before he could apologize for his stupidity, they waved a hand and ordered “Don’t apologize, just ask your questions.”  
  
“How should I address you? Is it Lord Dagon?”  
  
They shrugged. “If you like.”  
  
_What I’d like is to not be beaten for addressing you incorrectly._ He knew better than to say it aloud, and so moved on to his next question. “How long is a week down here, Lord Dagon?”  
  
If Dagon felt any displeasure at his form of address they didn’t show it. Yet. “Six days.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded again, and cast a more critical eye on the mess before him. Six days might be pushing it a little, but depending on how often he was interrupted chances were good that he would at least be putting the finishing touches on things in six days’ time.  
  
Depending on how many interruptions, and what methods he had at his disposal. “How many miracles do I have in my ration, Lord Dagon?”  
  
“You don’t.”  
  
_Ah,_ Aziraphale thought. _There’s the catch._ Six days was more or less impossible without miracles. Even if he was never interrupted, that would be a bit of a stretch- to say nothing of that fact that he might not even be able to read everything here with the ability to miraculously translate the text.  
  
Some of his dismay must have shown on his face, because Dagon rolled their eyes and clarified. “You don’t have a ration, idiot. Use as many miracles as you want.”  
  
“Oh- that’s. I. Really?” Aziraphale said, in what was definitely not his most intelligent moment to date.  
  
“Yes, really.”  
  
That… almost made sense. Heaven must have transferred his miraculous expenditure monitor on down along with everything else. They probably wanted to see what he would do, if he weren’t given any limits. Maybe they’d base whatever ration he was issued on what he did now.  
  
He’d have to be sure to use a few more than was strictly necessary, and give himself a bit of wiggle room for later. Still, though: six days with unlimited miracles. He could finish the room off under those circumstances.  
  
“Anything else?”  
  
“No, Lord Dagon.”  
  
He braced himself. Dagon might be acting bizarrely generous about the whole situation, but this next bit always hurt rather a lot. He did hope he would manage not to scream this time.  
  
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Dagon said, and then left the room.  
  
They left the room. _Without binding him to it._  
  
That wasn’t how things were done. It just- it wasn’t. There was always the binding- always the chanting that burned through him, always the awl piercing his ear, and always, always a very limited amount of space he was permitted to be in by the end of it. That was the point. He wasn’t meant to have the option of running away.  
  
He raised his fingers to his earlobe absently. Sandalphon had been his most recent handler, and he always used the largest gauge of awl permissible, but even if it hadn’t been so, his ear had been pierced so many times by now that it could never heal back over completely. There was a knot of scar tissue there now, and always would be.  
  
This had to be a test. It had to be.  
  
Well, if it was a test, it was one he could pass easily. He simply had to not leave the room, which he hadn’t intended on doing anyway.  
  
Mind made up, he put the index book down atop a stack of other books and cracked it open. He snapped to summon quill and ink, and selected the first item to catalogue: a piece of correspondence, still folded closed even though the seal was broken.  
  
_Caedite eos._ He read. _Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius._  
  
_Oh dear,_ Aziraphale thought.


	5. Chapter 5

As a consequence on Heaven and Hell’s respective stances on slavery, Hell became awash in former slaves.  
  
There were, of course, the angels who Fell as their only possible escape from slavery. All of the Watchers, yes- with one notable exception, every angel arrested during the Great Audit Fell within a thousand years, adding two hundred and forty-nine demons to the ranks of the Hellish Host.  
  
The thing was, after Solomon, there was suddenly a system being carved out to deal with the so-called defective angels, and put them to some use before they came to their inevitable end. Heaven found a value in that utility that it hadn't when said angels had merely been locked away. Certain high-ranking angels began to call for more audits, and as the demand for slaves increased far beyond the already-dwindling supply, their opinion became the majority. More audits were conducted, at irregular intervals spaced no more than two centuries apart, and with each audit more slaves were created from those who were found lacking. Inevitably, those newer slaves would Fall just as their predecessors had. With one notable exception, no one ever lasted more than a thousand years. Most didn't make it past five hundred.   
  
But it wasn’t merely a matter of Falling. There were defectors as well- angels who did not Fall so much as they left the horrors of home behind without so much as a backward glance. Samael was the first, probably the most famous, and certainly the highest-ranking angel to do so. She had done as she had done at the behest of the Metatron, and while she hadn’t exactly been shocked that the Hebrews created their own standards for slavery rather than doing away with the practice entirely once they’d escaped Egypt’s clutches, she’d still expected better from her fellow angels. Disappointment morphed to anger one day when she went to a meeting with Michael about smiting some of Sennecherib’s soldiers and found her fellow archangel raping her slave. Michael finished quickly, with a bored and disdainful expression on her face, and then she struck her slave across the face and acted surprised that Samael might want to discuss what the fuck just happened right before her eyes. Samael made her excuses and left, going straight to Lilith, the one being in all of Creation she felt had ever truly understood her, and began to negotiate her defection.  
  
She didn’t Fall. Lucifer could not demand that of her, apparently, and Samael didn’t quite know if she truly wanted to Fall, much less how to go about doing so, so it simply never happened.  
  
It happened several more times- mainly, the angels looking to defect had the sense that they would not make the cut when the next audit arrived and were terrified of the consequences. Some of them did eventually Fall, but most did not.  
  
And, of course, the human souls quickly outnumbered their celestial counterparts ten to one.  
  
The matter of who got into Heaven was a tricky one. There was some pre-selection on the part of humanity, in terms of what they believed, and how much guilt they brought with them to the afterlife. If you believed in the right God and thought that you were going to Hell, then you were virtually guaranteed to find yourself vindicated. If, however, you thought you were Heaven bound, or placed yourself in the hands of God, you might find yourself in for a nasty shock. God was generally as silent on the matter of who entered Heaven as She was on most things, and in lieu of direct divine intervention, Heaven had developed a bureaucracy for such things. Post-Solomon, the criteria for entry into Heaven skewed heavily towards masters who might be said to have treated their slaves well, and against slaves who rebelled against masters who did not treat them well at all.  
  
The celestial souls who came to Hell were generally some combination of angry and desperate, and they were all active- all quite fired up to do something, anything, other than being the plaything of some more powerful being. Hell found these souls easy to accommodate. It was the humans- no small number of whom had died abruptly in the middle of being tortured by their owners- who posed a problem. They were scared when they arrived- scarred and meek and suspicious. Many of them were quite certain that they had simply been traded from one owner to another. It took other humans- souls who had been Downstairs longer, who had been through the process of adjusting to damnation before, to help them through the transition. The high-ranking demons watched carefully, and began to write policies with the idea that sometimes gentleness and patience were required to get the most out of one’s underlings. It was a bit of pure pragmatism at first, which began to be adopted as a set of standards any demon worth their accursed nature would adhere to- something which wouldn’t just be applied to former slaves, but to any who had suffered a trauma on the way down.  
  
In Hell, of course, that could describe if not quite everyone, then certainly a supermajority of beings.  
  
Looming over this all was the thorny matter of Armageddon. Purely in terms of numbers, Hell was in an increasingly good position. Heaven’s policies kept funneling more and more people Downstairs: the Fallen, the defector, and the damned. They were shooting themselves in the foot, and Beelzebub didn’t trust it one bit.  
  
So, when an envoy was sent down to Hell with word that the Archangel Gabriel wanted an off-the-books meeting, Beelzebub leapt at the chance to get a glimpse of what the Enemy might be planning.The year was 1020 AD, and they were to meet on neutral ground, in the fortress-city of Troia, which was in the middle of being captured by Byzantines. Gabriel wore the colors of the invading Byzantines, so Beelzebub helped herself to the garb of the native Lombards and followed him to the appointed meeting spot.  
  
They were meant to come alone. He hadn’t- she spotted no less than seven angels in the vicinity, and did not doubt that there were more stationed nearby. That was just fine. She hadn’t come alone either.  
  
She walked into the villa with confidence enough to feel that if Gabriel intended for this to be a trap, then it was one which she could fight her way out of. She was expecting him to either be sitting in that smugly collected way of his, or to be standing with his spear at the ready. Instead she walked in on a tableau very much like the one that had made Samael turn her back on Heaven.  
  
Here were the differences: they were on Earth rather than in Heaven, Gabriel looked to be enjoying himself greatly, the slave’s tunic had ridden up and exposed his heavily bruised buttocks and thighs, and when Gabriel was finished he didn’t strike the slave. Other than that, it was very similar. Even the slave was the same, though Beelzebub had no way of knowing that.  
  
“Do you want a turn?” Gabriel asked, tucking himself back in with a snap.  
  
“Excuse me?” Beelzebub asked, nonplussed.  
  
“A turn. He’s got quite a mouth on him. Used to blabber on something fierce, but we’ve got him trained up for better things now,” Gabriel said with a dismissive wave.  
  
Beelzebub looked down at the slave. The slave did not look back, but simply knelt there, hunched and resigned.  
  
“You agreed to come alone,” she reminded Gabriel.  
  
Gabriel spread his hands wide, as though to say _you caught me_. “He doesn’t count, he’s not really people.”  
  
“Let's keep this professional,” she said, unable to keep her nose from wrinkling in distaste.  
  
“Suit yourself,” Gabriel said with a shrug. He snapped again, and the slave was suddenly bound in chains- painfully heavy ones, to judge by the way his eyes rolled back in his head and his already pale complexion went downright ashen. He made no noise, however, which might have had something to do with the padlock fastened over his mouth.  
  
She did her best to ignore the slave from that point on. She’d been a Prince of Hell since pre-Solomonic times, tuning out the suffering of others was a skill she had in spades. But it did bother her: not the suffering, exactly, but Gabriel’s ability to inflict it. God had gone through a smite-happy phase, so she didn’t expect that Upstairs would be free of violence, but it still felt uncomfortable, that Gabriel was able to rape his fellow angels without Falling- that so many angels that were raped were the ones who Fell. Before all of this had started, she would have thought that rape would have been a one-way ticket Downstairs, and the fact that it wasn’t, that it seemed to be tolerated if not endorsed by God… she didn’t know what to make of that. It spoke to their being some dimension of Falling that they weren’t privy to, and she didn’t like not knowing things about her own being.  
  
“We’ve been wondering about that too,” Dagon said when they next grabbed lunch. Restaurants were a human innovation, but one that Hell had embraced as a quick way to indulge in a little gluttony. Additionally, it was found that making those who had had a bit too much power in life work as a waiter for a century or two had a tendency to turn them into the kind of asshole a demon could work with, as opposed to the kind of asshole a demon would want to shove a hot poker inside of. “We’ve got up with a few theories, but they’re all shit, I won’t bore you with them.”  
  
They met up again a few years later: different place, same scene, same players. And again, and again, until one day in 1123 AD, there was a different slave kneeling between Gabriel’s legs.  
  
“What happened to the other one?” Beelzebub asked.  
  
“The other what?” Gabriel asked.  
  
Beelzebub didn’t dignify that with a response.  
  
“Eh. He’s on a public use rotation. I’ll get him back next century.”  
  
“I thought your rotations lasted for fifty years,” Beelzebub said, as a way to remind him that Heaven’s “rotations” were a main source of new recruits for Hell.  
  
Gabriel’s face twisted a little. “Yeah,” he drawled. “But he’ll be all sloppy after all that public use. I’m not bothering with that.”  
  
Beelzebub didn’t see the slave again until 1375, when she walked in to her meeting with Gabriel in Sis in an old abandoned estate that had once housed the family that owned the surrounding vineyards. It was Gabriel’s turn to dress as one of the locals, so he was dressed in a richly embroidered taraz complete with a wide belt and conical hat, while Beelzebub had picked her clothing off the body of a mamluk she had found particularly annoying. The slave was completely naked, and his wings were out and obviously freshly preened. That wasn’t usual. Gabriel wasn’t using him in the usual way either. Instead of gripping him tightly by the hair, Gabriel had his hands left loosely at his sides, and the slave was bobbing his head with energy, if not enthusiasm.  
  
“Ah, Beelzebub,” Gabriel drawled, or tried to. He grabbed for the slave’s head and held it back as he came with a grunt, painting the slave’s face with thin strings of white. He snapped to set himself back to rights, and left the slave as he was. “See? I told you I’d get him back.”  
  
“I really don’t care,” Beelzebub told him.  
  
“She was asking about you the last time we had one of these summits,” Gabriel said to the slave. It was the first time he’d done that either- talked to his slave directly.  
  
“I was not, because I don’t care,” Beelzebub repeated.  
  
“She wanted to know where you were because the slave I brought last time wouldn’t stop crying,” Gabriel continued.  
  
Beelzebub said nothing, because that one was kind of true.  
  
“Well?” Gabriel said, giving the slave a little kick. “What do you say to that?”  
  
The slave didn’t look at her but he did shift a bit so he was angled towards her. “Dusha’il is new to this,” he said softly. “She’ll learn. It’ll just- it takes time, to learn how to behave properly.”  
  
Gabriel frowned. “I doubt that’s what she wanted to know, sunshine.”  
  
“No, he was right,” Beelzebub said. “I just want to know if your slave is going to be an irritant, because otherwise I. Don’t. Care.”  
  
Gabriel’s frown deepened for a moment, and then his expression forcibly smoothed itself out. “Great. We agree then.” He sat up and leaned forward, indicating the chair in front of him. Beelzebub snapped, and sat in the chair she’d summoned instead. “Now. About these firearms the humans have started in with…”  
  
The firearms were going to a Thing she could already tell- with the humans, and with Gabriel. Their initial talk lasted several hours, ending in one impromptu demonstration of a firearm on one of her demons. She picked one of the newer human souls to be promoted topsided, Erik, who already had a reputation for being a bit of a freak about discorporation. Something to do with being carted off by Vikings as a child and then raised as one of their own. Point was, he looked happy enough to be shot, and the death itself wasn’t terribly slow.  
  
“I can see that these are going to be an irritant,” she said, mostly to wipe the smug expression off of Gabriel’s face.  
  
Throughout it all, the slave knelt, his face still covered in drying come. He didn’t look up at either one of them, and he didn’t make a sound- this one never did. He listened, though. Beelzebub could tell, the way his wings twitched as they speculated about the different uses the humans would have for these weapons, now that they were circulating into wider use.  
  
That was the second talk. They still hadn’t discussed the other pressing matters- the campaigns of Amir Timur, the still-ongoing fights between the Ottomans and the Byzantines, and the Reconquista in Spain- before a pure white messenger pigeon alighted on the windowsill and began to chirp out a heavenly chorus. It thankfully stopped when Gabriel got up to retrieve the message tied around its legs.  
  
“Well, apparently, I’ve got to do a thing,” Gabriel said. He snapped the message out of existence, and shooed the pigeon away. “This won’t take more than an hour. Aziraphale will make sure that you’re comfortable.”  
  
He left.  
  
“Aziraphale, huh?” Beelzebub asked.  
  
“It’s the name God gave me, Prince Beelzebub,” Aziraphale said quietly. “You may call me something else if you wish, of course.”  
  
Beelzebub snapped, and a towel and small basin of water appeared on the table. “I’d like you to wash your face,” she said.  
  
“Oh, thank you,” he replied, genuine relief evident in his voice. He dipped one end of the towel in the water, and then began to rub at his face with gentle, almost delicate motions.  
  
“Look,” Beelzebub said. “He’s clearly expecting us to fuck. How upset will he be when we don’t?”  
  
“He’ll be disappointed,” Aziraphale said, still methodically cleaning his face. “I doubt very much that he’ll take it out on you, and I can handle it.”  
  
“And what happens if we do?”  
  
Aziraphale hesitated for a moment, before replying with “Then he wins his bet with Sandalphon.”  
  
She had to hand it to him: if she’d had any inclination at all to take Gabriel up on his offer of rape, that would have killed it. “What?”  
  
“He and Sandalphon have a bet going. Gabriel believes that you want me, and that you’ll be eager to have me given half a chance,” Aziraphale explained. “Sandalphon believes that Gabriel is projecting- or perhaps lying to justify how often he purchases my contract. Whoever loses the bet also loses the right to bid on me during the next auction.”  
  
Beelzebub mulled that one over for a moment. “I wouldn’t have thought that Sandalphon would have been the more desirable owner.”  
  
Aziraphale shivered, almost imperceptibly. “He… really isn’t. But the terms of the bet are that he can bid on me if he wins, not that he’ll win me.”  
  
“Do you have another buyer lined up?” Beelzebub asked.  
  
Aziraphale let out half of a thin, reedy giggle before he got himself under control once more. “Not as such, Prince Beelzebub. Slaves aren’t really permitted to go around selling themselves. I just know that Uriel is going to be in charge of the next audit, and will need someone who’s good with paperwork- and I’m very good with paperwork. She’s a more frugal sort than either Sandalphon or Gabriel, so her pockets will be deeper than either of their’s come the next auction.”  
  
That was clever- almost wily. Beelzebub chose her next words with care. “And he thinks you’re only for sex.”  
  
“It’s a not uncommon assumption,” Aziraphale said with a shrug. "He's certainly counting on you to feel that way."

"Breaking the bank on that one, is he?" She couldn't say that she disliked the idea. Aziraphale must not dislike it either. The way she figured, it must break down in his head like this: Gabriel will be insufferable whether he wins or loses, so that's a wash either way. This way, he got the satisfaction of watching him lose, followed by the satisfaction of watching Sandalphon lose, on top of not adding another name to the list of beings who raped him. 

It was a hustle. A sad, pathetic hustle for basically nothing, but a hustle nonetheless. She could respect that. 

“I daresay he’s done everything he can to make me seem appealing and available short of bringing one of the pillories down here with us, too," Aziraphale informed her. "He even had me locked up in one of his spare armoires for a year before this meeting.”  
  
Beelzebub blinked. “How is that supposed to make you more appealing?”  
  
“It ensures that I’m, well- that I’m tight, I suppose. Untouched. As much as I can be.”  
  
There wasn’t anything else Beelzebub felt like she needed to learn, not when she’d already learned that this slave was a favorite of Gabriel’s, that he possessed some ability to play his masters off one another, and that he definitely listened in to every conversation had in his presence. It was enough to convince her that the sooner this angel came to Hell, the better off Hell would be.  
  
“I see,” she said.  
  
They passed the rest of the time Gabriel was gone in silence.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, this part merits a warning for some suicidal ideation. Aziraphale’s still in a very dark place, mentally, and he’s not really taking in the fact that he’s landed in decent company. It’ll get better, I promise.

There were no interruptions, and not merely in terms of demands for his services, either. There were absolutely no interruptions at all. No one came to check in on him, or to check any of the items he was currently cataloging. Stranger still there were no calls to prayers or whatever form of worship Satan might demand from his demons. There were eight calls to prayer that sounded each day in Heaven. Three were compulsory, corresponding roughly to what the humans would call morning, midday, and evening, though of course there was no day or night in Heaven, merely hours that were more for working than not. Five was generally considered the correct number of prayers for a hardworking angel to observe, though if one wanted to, one was entitled to observe all eight.  
  
Presuming one was free, of course. Slaves did not have any rights to pray, much less to take breaks, though breaks of a kind were, de facto, had as a result of the schedule. With every free angel off to sing hosannas, piyyutim, trisagions, adkar, cantillations and all manner of celestial harmonies, Aziraphale was guaranteed to be left alone at least three times a day. In agony, sometimes, when his handler was the likes of Raziel or Sandalphon, but alone nevertheless.  
  
There was no such system in place here. If it weren’t for the hourglass he’d found early on, each turn marked with a new, grotesquely-carved imp being given the top spot, he would have no way to mark the time at all.  
  
The lack of interruptions made the work go by quickly. It also made Aziraphale feel like he was jumping out of his skin, after the first day or so. It was a test, it had to be a test, he knew that, he just didn’t quite understand what he was being tested on- because it became apparent after that first day, that six days of no limits on his miracles and no interruptions on his time was an overly-generous time limit to finish off the room. He would be done early, at this rate, and he could not fathom Dagon not knowing that he would be done early, and neither could he fathom their point in giving him a deadline that would be so easily met.  
  
Not knowing what would be waiting for him at the end of his task, he tried to slow down- to read each letter and report and even the handful of books cover to cover rather than skimming for the essentials. It didn’t help much. He was a very quick reader.  
  
He tried to give himself some breaks, but mostly ended up staring into the flickering flame of the lamplight conjured by Dagon for a few minutes, until some kind of terror rose up in his throat and forced him to look away.  
  
It might be hellfire, was the thing. Flame conjured by a demon- and a high-ranking one at that- could certainly be hellfire.  
  
Hellfire was one of the few things that could destroy an angel outright, and the terror Aziraphale just barely managed not to be swallowed by could not be accurately described as fear for his life.  
  
It wouldn’t even be a real suicide, or so he reasoned. He could only presume that he hadn’t Fallen at this juncture because God had forgotten about him, or else had deemed him unworthy of the effort that required. So, he wouldn’t really be committing suicide, he’d just be... correcting an oversight. Removing an errant variable from the equation. That sort of thing.  
  
The flames in the lamp were small, though. They wouldn’t be able to consume him all at once. It would be slow, a creep of fire up his arm or leg, perhaps.  
  
It would hurt a great deal. He hated that that was the thought that prevented him from drawing closer to the lamps, but there it was: he didn’t want to put himself through any more pain, no matter how well-deserved it might be.  
  
So, each time he found himself staring, he shook himself free and turned back to the work at hand.  
  
The room’s contents all pertained to the Cathar heresy, especially their sticky end during the Albigensian Crusade. Aziraphale knew a fair bit of Heaven’s view on the matter- Michael had been his handler during the main military push, and when Gabriel had purchased his contract the cycle after next he’d been in charge of dispensing minor miracles and field agents to aid the Inquisition of Toulouse to stamp the practice out entirely. Both of them had been convinced that the Cathars must have been influenced by someone downstairs. The idea that humans were the souls of Fallen angels, doomed to be reincarnated had been laughable. The idea that the Fallen were redeemable and might one day merit reentry into Heaven had been considerably less so, and many had found the forthright declaration that angels had free will themselves to be more than a bit off putting.  
  
From the sound of these reports, Hell had been just as taken aback by the notion as Heaven. They’d just been less trigger happy about it, reasoning that simply because some humans thought themselves to be angels unaware of their true being didn’t necessarily make it so. Besides, as the final say of who entered Heaven was effectively in the hands of the Archangels themselves, the chances of these humans making the cut were slim to none anyway.  
  
Another surprise: just as many Cathars had refused to recant their beliefs and rejoin the Church even under pain of death, they had also refused to join with the Devil when offered the chance to save themselves from destruction.  
  
_Why people are so keen on martyring themselves for the very same people trying to kill them?_ one plaintive report from a demon named Crowley had asked.  
  
Crowley had been involved with the Cathars quite a bit, it seemed. The books Hell had in their possession had come from him, as did several of the reports. He’d missed the Massacre at Béziers- no demon had actually been there for the event, apparently, which was surprising because Haahiah, Heaven’s agent on the ground, had blamed the massacre on demonic influence. It had prevented the Cathars from repenting and being redeemed in a way Heaven could abide, or so the thought was, and it wasn’t like anyone expected the demons to be loyal to the humans they’d turned away from Heaven’s guiding light.  
  
Except, apparently, Hell had no part in the making of the Cathars’ philosophy, and hadn’t been particularly keen on their demise either.  
  
_In case anyone was wondering, dedicating the slaughter to the glory of God does not prevent a massacre from breaking the consecration of a cathedral._ Crowley had written on the matter. _No survivors here. I’m going to Toulouse, to see if I can’t head the Crusaders off and sway a few people over to our side properly. It’s not like they aren’t headed Downstairs anyway with Heaven being as anal as they are, but at least this way they might live longer, happier lives, maybe pop out a few kids and raise them to praise Satan, who knows._  
  
That was a sticking point, apparently: the Cathars were reluctant to bring more souls into what they saw as a cycle of degradation and despair. It lead to accusations of sodomy, which Crowley confirmed as _being about as common as it is anywhere else. These ‘Good Christians’ as they call themselves might be slightly more tolerant of it, but only slightly, and a lot of it comes from not believing in the death penalty more than any sympathy towards sodomites. Or tribadists, for that matter. Sex, in general, they're not a big fan of. Lilith isn’t going to get a lot of souls here._  
  
In spite of this he did have some luck in getting recruits- enough to found a Satanic monastery somewhere in the south of Languedoc. And here came the bigger shock of Aziraphale’s reading: the deed for the monastery was written in more formal language than the rest of the reports, and apparently it merited the use of personal sigils along with a written script. The demon Crowley’s sigil was the very same one that had been burned onto Crawly’s face.  
  
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, fingers brushing the snake sign burned into the parchment. “You’ve changed your name.”  
  
He was still around, then. Or she. Or possibly they? To judge from the reports, Crowley seemed to change their gender at will, which wasn’t a concept Aziraphale was overly familiar with. Whenever Michael had to visit Earth she became a man, but Aziraphale was never certain whether that represented a shift in identity or merely costuming. Uriel largely stayed in Heaven, and went between woman and none as she pleased, but he didn’t know of anyone else who’d done that.  
  
But no, some of the Watchers had, hadn’t they? Most of them, even, back when they’d all been merely imprisoned rather than enslaved. But proper angels, ones that weren’t defective, very rarely seemed to display any changes in identities like that. Most didn’t bother to change their corporation from the factory presets, save for more prominently displaying their divinity marks, or manifesting genitalia when they wanted an outlet.  
  
Aziraphale had had his gender presentation changed for him, every so often. Gabriel had done it, a good fifteen hundred years back. Something to do with wanting to have all the details right for the Conception. Jophiel had done it once and a while, but Jophiel had a tendency to make wild changes of all sorts to his corporation to fit whatever vision she had of him: she was an artist, and he was her clay. He’d found the change to be mildly unpleasant on each occasion. Not something he would have chosen for himself.  
  
Did Crowley choose it? Was it costuming? Was it assigned? (Was he/she/they well and living in relative freedom and safety, or was he/she/they constantly looking over his/her/their shoulder and being forced to change in ways he/she/they didn't like?) The reports gave no indication towards any particular answer. Eventually he had to put the entire line of thought aside, and move on to the next report.  
  
He had everything shelved and cataloged by the end of the fourth day. He added onto the index, creating cross-references to dates and the names of agents along with the filing system he’d created based upon locations, but even inputting the relevant information by hand didn’t create more than a few hours of work for him. Assuming he had until the end of the sixth day, that still left the better part of two days to wait for Dagon’s return.  
  
He knew what he should do. He should wait, kneeling quietly, for the appointed hour to arrive. And he tried, he really did. He knelt down on the faded carpet that had been hiding beneath the piles of paperwork, and he looked straight ahead, and he just _couldn’t_.  
  
He couldn’t focus. He lost count three times before he gave up on keeping track of the seconds. He couldn’t stop fidgeting. He kept finding that the walls seemed to close in on him, that the flickering lamplights seemed to draw ever-nearer, that he was breathing too fast and too shallow, and every time he would stop, would close his eyes and stop breathing and calm himself down it wouldn’t last. It wouldn’t be long before he found himself right back where he started.  
  
He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be alone in this room with the flames flickering all around him.  
  
He still knelt for a time. He probably looked proper, when he managed to hold himself back from fidgeting. But he knew that his head was probably tilted up too high, and that his gaze was too focused on the door before him.  
  
This was the test, clearly: to see if he would stay put, even when there was nothing to occupy him. He should have found it easy. He’d been left alone for far longer, after all, sometimes in the dark, with barely any space to breathe, and in no small amount of pain, too.  
  
He wasn’t meant to leave. The lack of binding didn’t change that one very obvious fact. He wasn’t meant to leave.  
  
But as some draft blew into the room and cast the door in flickering hellish light, all he could think was the one way or another he was going to fail.  
  
He was pretty sure that he remembered the way to the entrance. Dagon must keep their office somewhere around there, mustn’t they? And even if they didn’t, Aziraphale was bound to run into someone else who worked in the Archives sooner or later, wasn’t he? He could ask them where Dagon’s office was- or perhaps if they knew what it was that he should be doing. Surely that was a better use of his time than just kneeling here? Surely Dagon would realize that, and show him clemency.  
  
And even if they didn’t, at least then he’d know what sort of punishments he would be facing here. As of this moment, all he had to go on was _worse, worse, worse, it has to be worse that Heaven somehow, right?_  
  
Although he knew that his mind had been made up, he stayed kneeling on the floor for some time. He tried counting again, but lost it after about four thousand seconds. The hourglass flipped over, a new ghoulish face presiding over the timepiece. Another draft blew in, causing the flames to momentarily dance higher on their wicks.  
  
And then Aziraphale got to his feet, crossed over to the door, and opened it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the most graphic description of rape I plan on writing. It comes in the second portion, right after Gabriel asks Aziraphale if he'd like him to help him feel better, if you wish to skip it. 
> 
> The whole thing you can probably skip if you're not feeling up to it, as it's a description of Aziraphale's time as a slave in Heaven. While it was cathartic for me to write, and I feel like it does add something in terms of outlining his specific baggage and Heaven's system of slavery, you should be able to follow along with the rest of the story okay. 
> 
> And the next chapter will finally be Aziraphale making friends, and it's pretty much all uphill from there.

A good day in Heaven for Aziraphale might have involved something like this:  
  
The call to the first compulsory prayer sounded, and Aziraphale, already alone amongst the honeycomb stacks of scrolls, suddenly found himself downright deserted. He finished his reshelving quickly, and then made his way to the breakroom.  
  
Tidying the breakroom was one of his assigned tasks, and when it had been assigned to him there had been an emphasis placed on ensuring that the stained glass windows and mosaics remained properly maintained with physical labor, as was the mandate. There had also been a lot of discussion as to whether or not the likes of him should be allowed to maintain the breakroom, given his impurities. The three to five angels that were generally kept chained beneath the arches of the dividing wall between the meditative portion of the breakroom and the part meant for mingling had been both an afterthought, and the reason he’d been allowed inside the inner chamber at all. He could hardly pollute a room that already had slaves kept on its threshold, or so the logic went.  
  
He took care of them first.  
  
There was a fountain in this outer chamber, which he ignored for the time being, and a foot bath, which he turned on and let run for a moment while he filled one of the buckets allotted to him.  
  
There was a tapestry running along the wall the foot bath was set into that was not quite a tapestry. It looked like a wonderfully embroidered cloth, but it displayed information about the coming day’s activities: what higher-ranking angels had scheduled a visit, any demands from other departments for records that needed to be met, who was on duty at which sections, who had cashed in one of their vouchers for Aziraphale’s time, which sections were due for a spot check, and what materials were going to be rotated out on display. There was supposed to be a visit from Remiel before the second compulsory prayer and from Chamuel after the third, the Miraculous Oversight Department wanted another look at the records they had of Mansa Musa’s recent hajj, there were only two angels who wanted his time today (Sablo’il, who just wanted to keep up appearances and would probably just want Aziraphale to read and offer his opinion on something trivial, and Zieroath, who was generally easy to please so long as he kept himself pliant and drummed up something like cheerfulness during the act), Aziraphale was spot-checking all their records of the helots of Sparta, and they were replacing a selection of antediluvian praiseworks with Coptic scripture in the display case closest to the seventh choir. Aziraphale took it all in with a vague sense of gratitude. When you had no control over your life, predictability felt a great deal like safety.  
  
The bucket was full so he turned off the water, wet one of the cloths he had at his disposal, and turned towards the angels who had remained chained in the breakroom. They were all, as had become the custom, angels who were on their public use rotations, purchased by those in the second sphere for three or five years, and then left here as a way to curry favor with the department.  
  
“That was the first of the big ones, so, good morning, Yothamai, Shadya’il, Musshuel,” he said quietly. They all had other names, of course- nicknames, shorter names, names that cut out The Name from their own, names they could use to identify one another after they Fell. Aziraphale had made a point of not learning anyone else’s since the last of the Watchers Fell. There was no stopping the others from learning his, at this point: half his handlers called him _Zira_ when they wanted to make a point.  
  
“Morning,” Musshuel replied from where she was chained beneath the arch further from him. Yothamai, who was nearest, grunted. Shadya’il, in the center, remained silent, seemingly asleep.  
  
He decided to let her be for the time being. There were, he knew, precious few chances for rest with these duties. Instead he started in with Yothamai.  
  
Yothamai didn’t like to be touched, so Aziraphale merely loosened the chains binding them and handed them the damp cloth so they could clean themselves off. It wasn’t what he was supposed to do, strictly speaking, but he was allowed to loosen the chains in order to better clean the slaves left in the breakroom, and no one had expressly forbidden him from merely helping them to clean themselves.  
  
It wouldn’t excuse either one of them from punishment if they were caught, of course, but the punishment for being stupid was markedly less excruciating than the punishment for being disobedient.  
  
Aziraphale stood, blocking the sight of Yothamai from the door as well as he could, and held out the bucket so they could refresh the cloth as needed. He kept up a steady patter of conversation as they worked. Yothamai asked for a date, so he gave it in every calendar he currently had access to, and then he read out what was on the tapestry, as none of them could see the whole thing from where they were chained. Once Yothamai was clean he paused for a moment, and got one of the dipping cups out from the fountain. He filled it, and held it out to Yothamai to drink.  
  
That wasn’t in his orders either. He just couldn’t quite bring himself to care as he should have. He’d been where they were, after all. He returned to it for seven years out of every public use cycle he had, and whenever his handler had such a whim. He knew what it could mean- a kind word, a gentle touch or a lack of touch altogether, a sip of water- and he felt like he should give out what he could, when he could.  
  
Shadya’il was still sleeping when Yothamai finished, so Aziraphale refastened their chains, and moved on to Messhuel. She wasn’t as bothered by touch so Aziraphale did the cleaning himself, talking all the while: gossip he’d overheard, something funny one of the archivists had said, a report of the latest shift in the department’s internecine politics.  
  
Once he’d finished with Messhuel, he knelt down before Shadya’il and called her name until she jerked awake with a start. She calmed once her eyes caught on Aziraphale’s, sagging against the stone with a clinking of chains.  
  
“‘Lo, Aziraphale,” she said. “Evening already?”  
  
“Morning,” Aziraphale corrected gently. “Shall I give you the highlights?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
He went back over things with her, and she added her own commentary and a few tidbits of gossip she’d picked while, well…  
  
“Yeialel mentioned something after she’d finished raping Musshuel,” Shadya’il said, and Aziraphale flinched.  
  
Shadya’il, who was undoubtedly the bravest of the four of them, rolled her eyes. “Would you prefer I tell you what position she had her in?”  
  
“No,” said both Aziraphale and Messhuel.  
  
Shadya’il was silent for a moment, before she continued on as though nothing was amiss- and Aziraphale supposed there wasn’t.  
  
It wasn’t as though rape was the wrong word, as this wasn’t anything they would have chosen, nothing to which they would have agreed. Though, Aziraphale did agree, sometimes: because it was the lesser of the punishments arrayed before him, or else because his agreement had been asked of him, and he could hardly refuse a direct order now, could he? Sometimes he initiated it- seduced his handlers, so they would be in a better mood and less inclined to lash out at him.  
  
But that was beside the point. That was him, though, and under different, more privileged circumstances. He just sort of had sex happen to him: these angels really were being raped, and it was silly of him to flinch at the term.  
  
Still, there was something about hearing the words spoken aloud that filled him with a kind of dread. He stayed silent for the rest of the time he spent cleaning and giving water to Shadya’il until it was time to bid everyone farewell and move on to the rest of his cleaning duties.

* * *

An average day for Aziraphale in Heaven might have involved something like this:  
  
Gabriel was his handler, as was often the case. Sometimes he even purchased Aziraphale’s contract two or three times in a row- or more. Aziraphale was vaguely grateful for the cycle of rotations that designated one out of seven rotations for public use- it meant that Gabriel would, at maximum, purchase his contract five rotations in a row, as he was barred from buying all of Aziraphale’s public use time, and he avoided purchasing the contracts of anyone who had just been on a public use rotation. It was something to do with wanting his slaves’ corporations to be tight. Aziraphale was decently certain that his corporation, at least, didn’t work like- even if he‘d been torn open during the proceedings, any halfway decent healer could fix it in a trice- but he wasn’t about to tell Gabriel that.  
  
He wasn’t the worst handler Aziraphale had ever had. He was just particular, and there was no pleasing him- quite literally. It took Aziraphale several centuries, but he eventually hit upon the idea that Gabriel was happiest when, paradoxically, he had several small, inconsequential details to complain about. While the idea was bearing fruit in terms of avoiding the worst of Gabriel's temper, it also played havoc on Aziraphale’s nerves, as it meant that he needed to have a few minor flaws on display at all times for Gabriel to pick at and sometimes even punish.  
  
There was his body, of course- too large and soft for Gabriel’s tastes, or so he often proclaimed. That was easiest to manage. He’d tried changing it to suit Gabriel’s stated preferences early on, and Lord, but that had been a mistake. Not only had he spent the next forty-nine years feeling the vague sense of disconnect that tended to accompany major changes to his corporation, but Gabriel hadn’t been happy about it _at all_. Keeping it as it he was used to turned out to be for the best. The fidgeting was also a constant companion of his: he tried to stop, he really did, but he simply couldn’t, and when Gabriel caught him at it it was a sure-fire way to end up with a few new bruises. The rest of his flaws he simply had to juggle, and hope he wasn’t exposing some part of himself that Gabriel found particularly annoying at the time. His days were consumed with trying to figure out which minor acts of insubordination he should perform in order to- well, he couldn’t really say _please_ Gabriel, but to provide him with whatever it was that he got out of it.  
  
Right now, for example, he was considering going to Gabriel’s office and asking a question about his miracle allowance.  
  
“Haven’t you done enough damage?” Zephon snarled when Aziraphale raised the possibility with him. Zephon had once been a cherub, one of the original three hundred guardians of Eden, just as Aziraphale had been. And, much like Aziraphale and the other two hundred and ninety-eight cherubim, he’d been demoted to Principality after their failure to keep Adam and Eve free from sin. He’d been caught up in the audit before last, though what his sins were meant to be Azirapahle had never managed to hear tell.  
  
“What’s crawled up your arse now?” Korceal asked, poking his head into the office area from the bedroom. Korceal had been caught in the latest audit- and so had a good dozen of the original guardians of Eden. All that remained of the three hundred of them were rather expected to be enslaved in the near future at this point, something which Zephon blamed Aziraphale for, for all that there were centuries between his enslavement and Zephon's.   
  
“He wants to go to Gabriel and ask if we can use miracles to collate these expenditure files!” Zephon hissed.  
  
Korceal turned to Aziraphale. “What’s the reasoning there?”  
  
You might suppose that having some seniority- as Aziraphale always had seniority over whichever other slaves’ time had been purchased by his current handler- would come with some kind of, if not authority, then ability to impart advice and have it been listened to. This was very often not the case. The most common school of thought was that the greater your defects the sooner you would be caught, and therefore the longer someone had been enslaved the greater their defectiveness. And who would want to risk listening to the advice of a tainted, flawed being who was destined to Fall?  
  
Even when you, yourself, were officially branded a tainted, flawed being destined to Fall. Maybe even especially then, in some cases. Even with Raguel’s new orientation system, the details of which Aziraphale had no desire to know but was evidently so brutal that several angels had simply disappeared entirely, it could take centuries before it fully sunk in that this was their reality now, that it wasn’t just some kind of horrible misunderstanding, that there was no way to file for an appeal.  
  
Of course, when the practicalities of trying to survive their position with as little pain as possible set it, people oftentimes got over that part. Korceal had, more or less- Zephon hadn’t, not when it came to Aziraphale, at least.  
  
“We cannot possibly finish collating these files before the end of the third compulsory prayer without the use of miracles,” Aziraphale told him. “If he comes back home and we haven’t finished, then he’ll be displeased. He’ll assume we’ve been slacking off at best, or that we’re covering for someone at worst, and he’ll take it out on both of us accordingly, and probably you as well simply for being there. If one of us uses a miracle without seeking permission first, he might let it slide, or he might be tremendously upset with us for misusing that ability, and again, he’ll assume that we used it in order to slack off. _Not_ telling him that we used the miracle straight away isn’t an option, he gets a copy of our expenditure reports and he actually does read those himself. If he finds out from that, then he’ll assume that we have something we’re trying to hide from him and we will all be in for it then, believe me. If I go and ask him for permission, the worst that will happen is that he’ll tell me ‘no’ and give me a few lashes before sending me on my way. At best, I obtain his permission, get back here lickety-split, and we can finish with our assigned tasks before he gets home.”  
  
“Well, that sounds reasonable to me,” Korceal said, looking askance at Zephon.  
  
Zephon grumbled indistinctly but offered no further protests.  
  
“I can sit in for you if you like,” Korceal offered.  
  
“Oh, you have your own duties, I couldn’t possibly-” Aziraphale began.  
  
Korceal cut him off by pulling a seat up to the pile of paperwork and starting in. “If you get permission, you can help me sort out his laundry and shit, yeah?”  
  
“That’s fair,” Aziraphale agreed, and so he took his leave.  
  
_I’m going to Gabriel’s office,_ he thought as he stepped into the hall. _I’m going to Gabriel’s office._  
  
He’d been bound there, as he was bound to Gabriel’s personal rooms, but travel between the two locations wasn’t instantaneous unless he used a miracle- something which Gabriel disliked immensely. So he was stuck walking, which was permissible by the strictures of the binding, so long as he kept focused on his destination and went there directly.  
  
It was doable, though not without a price. By the time he entered Gabriel’s office, he could feel the building sort of static charge from the place on his neck where Gabriel’s sigil was branded onto him. It ached and stung, but didn’t quite burn, not yet. If he dallied enough, the pain would become debilitating. If _that_ went on for long enough, it would be discorporating, and quite painfully so too, as he had learned when he’d managed to infuriate Michael enough that she’d banished him from beyond his bounds. It had probably been the most agonizing discorporation he’d endured to date, and as he’d belonged to Sandalphon a good half dozen times and had more than a few mishaps during his public use cycles that was saying something.  
  
The pain began to dissipate the moment he stepped back within bounds, though Aziraphale couldn’t relax just yet. He’d been bound to the whole of the office Gabriel oversaw, not just his own private one, and that meant that he was now alone with a good three to four dozen angels who took their cues from Gabriel as to how to behave. Consequently, that meant that if Aziraphale was caught out alone, things would get very unpleasant very quickly, and unless Gabriel’s underlings did any sort of serious physical damage the blame would fall upon him as well.  
  
The trick was to move as though he had a purpose- which he did, of course, he wouldn’t even have been able to make the walk here if he hadn’t had a purpose. Gabriel’s underlings would start closing in if they noticed him waiting or engaged in busywork, but if he looked like he was here doing something for Gabriel they would leave him alone, as they were leaving alone the fourth slave Gabriel currently owned. Reiyel their name was- Aziraphale could see them busily sealing up missives in wax, and gave them a nod as he passed.  
  
“Please, I’m just trying to get this filing done.”  
  
Of course, it helped if the underlings were already engaged, as they evidently were with the fifth slave whose time Gabriel had currently purchased. That would be Quabriel, who at six hundred years of slavery was almost as much of an old timer as Aziraphale was. This wasn’t the first time they’d shared a handler, so Aziraphale knew what she was liable to need later. He made a guilty note to himself to see if she could be given a few extra minutes in the shower this evening, and the chance to vent. He’d do it later, when she’d been brought back to Gabriel’s rooms so he could go wrestle or race or do whatever sport it was that Gabriel was enamored with now and it was just the five of them alone.  
  
Sometimes, slaves of the same handler, or even slaves who belonged to members of the same department, would be required to cooperate, or at least police one another’s behavior and speech. Gabriel preferred them to be all in competition with one another for his attention, so any kind of benign coordination beyond what was necessary to complete their assigned tasks had to be done out of his sights.  
  
He made a beeline straight for Gabriel’s office, faltering only when he realized that his handler wasn’t alone in his office.  
  
_The door’s open,_ Aziraphale reasoned. _So he’s probably not meeting with anyone very important. He’s certainly not discussing anything important._  
  
He’d already draw the attention of one or two of Gabriel’s underlings, so if he stopped now, he would be virtually guaranteed to end up next to Quabriel, who, from the sound of things, was being forced to jump up and down on one leg in exchange for having the files she was working with returned. He continued forwards.  
  
As tended to happen at least once on an average day, he’d been catastrophically wrong: Gabriel was currently engaged in a meeting with Uriel. Aziraphale stopped at the threshold, but Gabriel had already noticed him.  
  
Their eyes met, and Gabriel twitched his head, indicating that Aziraphale should step inside. He did so, making himself as quiet and small and unobtrusive as possible. It wouldn’t help, he knew, but it at least wouldn’t add anything to the hurt he was about to experience.  
  
When Uriel left, Gabriel turned to him expectantly.  
  
“I’m sorry for the intrusion, sir,” he said. “I merely had a question about-”  
  
“Did I say you could talk, sunshine?”  
  
Aziraphale clammed up, and shook his head.  
  
“Well?” Gabriel pressed.  
  
“No, sir,” Aziraphale said, forcing the words out through a suddenly-tight throat. “I’m sorry, sir.”  
  
“Did I say you could apologize?”  
  
Ah. So it was going to be like that today, was it? “No, sir.”  
  
Gabriel’s head twitched again, this time in the direction of the little table near the back of the room. “Bend over, _Zira_.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” Aziraphale said, and hurried over to the table.  
  
He bent over, the way Gabriel seemed to like best: hands gripping the underside of the table to brace himself, his legs spread to just past shoulder’s width, his belly flat against the table’s surface. He kept his eyes front, not daring to look as Gabriel riffled through the discipline drawer of his desk, nor as he approached Aziraphale and flipped the hem of his tunic up, exposing his bottom to the air.  
  
“Keep count.”  
  
“Yes, sir-AH!” The second word was nearly lost in the yelp he made as Gabriel struck him with a rod with enough force that if it had been ordinary, unblessed wood, it almost certainly would have broken upon impact. “One,” he gasped out.  
  
Gabriel gave him thirty-six strokes, each as forceful as the last. He was bleeding a little sluggishly in a few places before the end of it, and weeping, just barely controlled enough to keep count.  
  
Gabriel moved about behind him for a little while. Aziraphale hadn’t been told he could move, so he stayed where he was, and tried to get his crying under control.  
  
“Would you like me to make you feel better?” Gabriel asked, after a few minutes of nothing but sniffles had passed.  
  
“Yes, sir,” Aziraphale replied. “Please.”  
  
Gabriel moved to loom over him once more, and Aziraphale flinched as he felt Gabriel’s hand caress his buttocks. There was no healing miracle, though, or even a numbing one. Instead Gabriel’s hand dipped deeper between his legs. Aziraphale finally realized where this was heading a split second before Gabriel realized he wasn’t manifesting anything.  
  
“It’s going to make this impossible if you don’t give me something to work with, champ,” Gabriel said, a lazy sort of threat in his voice.  
  
“I know, I’m sorry, sir, I just- which would you like?” Aziraphale babbled out. Hopefully, Gabriel would read his current state as indecision rather than reluctance, or worse, outright refusal.  
  
“Give me a cunt to fuck,” Gabriel ordered, and Aziraphale obliged.  
  
Gabriel had his preferences here that needed to be catered to as well. Aziraphale made sure he was virgin-tight, complete with an intact hymen that would bleed when Gabriel penetrated him (he was being penetrated, he was bleeding, Gabriel moaning in appreciation above him) but not profusely, not enough to stain his handler’s clothes if he hadn’t removed them all before hand (he hadn’t, Aziraphale could feel the drag of silk against his back from the loros Gabriel still had folded over his left arm, and he could feel the hem of his divetesion brushing against his thighs). He made himself sensitive (“Yes! Oh yes, sir, thank you!”), he always had to make himself sensitive whenever he belonged to Gabriel no matter what genitals he had on (“Your cock feels so good!”), as the Archangel loved to hear about how much Aziraphale was enjoying it (“Thank you, sir, please, more, harder-”) during the act (He didn’t have to think about the words at all, he just had to let his mouth go, it knew what to do during these encounters with Gabriel all on its own by now). He always made sure that he was wet from the start (the sound of it, the slapping and squelching, and his own voice begging for more), and though Gabriel always took it to mean that he was aroused (“Yeah, you love this don’t you?”) it was purely a matter of pragmatism (“It’s like She made you to be a whore. I bet you’re glad we caught you early, aren’t you?”): outside of punishments, Gabriel didn’t much care whether or not his slaves were hurt, (it hurt, it hurt, it hurt) and consequently, he could hurt them rather a lot without meaning to.  
  
Sometimes Aziraphale had to fake his orgasm. This time Gabriel paid enough attention to his clit that his job became one of holding himself back until either Gabriel said he could come, or the Archangel did. He ended up letting himself go when he felt the first pulses of Gabriel’s seed inside him, moaning loudly all the while.  
  
After a moment to catch his breath, Gabriel pulled back and away.  
  
“You may leave, Aziraphale,” he said, which might be what he wanted to hear, but wasn’t what he had come here for.

“Wait,” he blurted out, even as he stood. “Sir. I- may I clean your cock?” He flushed bright red as he said it, but he didn’t stammer. It probably sounded like he actually wanted it.

It definitely did. Gabriel smirked magnanimously down upon him before replying with “Sure. Go ahead.”

So Aziraphale dropped to his knees and got up Gabriel’s divetesion. He licked at his handler’s cock, stained with Gabriel’s come and his own juices and blood, and then he sucked it into his mouth so he could let himself gag on it- Gabriel always read the gagging as eagerness, for some reason. Aziraphale wasn’t surprised when he felt the Archangel getting miraculously hard again. He merely began to bob his head up and down the hardening shaft, continuing to suck and to whorl his tongue around it. He could almost see it from the outside: the bump he made in the fabric of the divetesion, the back-and-forth motions of his head. He could control it better from there. It was dead useful, being able to be his own puppet like that.

Gabriel came again. Aziraphale swallowed, and then shuffled back out from under the hem. He remained kneeling, not in the least because Gabriel had started to run his fingers indulgently through his hair.

“You said you had a question,” he said, after a moment. “Ask.”

“Thank you, sir,” Aziraphale said. “I- I was wondering if it would be permissible for me to use a few small miracles on the collating? Sir? There were an awful lot of miracles performed this quarter, and I’m not sure we can finish before the end of the day otherwise.”

Gabriel chuckled. “God, you’re stupid. You came all the way here for _that_?”

“Yes, sir,” Aziraphale said, his face flushing. He forced his head not to duck, in case it looked like he was pulling away, and his hands to remain by his sides, so he wouldn’t start to fidget.

“Of course you can use the miracles,” Gabriel told him, withdrawing his hand. “No more than five, though, and keep it to less if you can. Now, up you get.”

“Thank you, sir,” Aziraphale said as he stood.

“You may leave,” Gabriel said again.

“Yes, sir, and thank you,” Aziraphale replied. He hurried off: the door had been open the entire time, of course, and he didn’t want to stick around in case any of Gabriel’s underlings got any ideas. He could deal with the mess he could feel sticking to his thighs later, after he was safely ensconced in Gabriel’s rooms and had told the others the good news.

* * *

Aziraphale couldn’t even speak of his worst days in Heaven in any detail.

It was weeping uncontrollably as the awl pierced his ear because he knew that Sandalphon wouldn’t even remove it before fucking him for the first time, and he knew that he had forty-nine years of this and worse to look forward to. It was thrashing and screaming and begging three days into confinement in that coffin-like armoire Gabriel seemed to keep for just such a purpose, hating that this was the treatment that affected him so strongly. It was laying on Raziel’s bed, legs chained apart, chanting _Thank you, thank you, thank you_ because he wasn’t permitted to say _no_ and _please_ would only sound like he was asking for more. It was being left in the pillories off the reception area, where angels just arrived from Earth would come with artifacts from their travels and try to see how many of them would fit in him. It was waking at the end of his rest year to come face-to-face with that awful Power whose name he’d never caught, the one who would leer at him as he changed into his new uniform, who would fuck him before he was branded, who would brand and then heal him several times over ‘just to make sure it was done right’. It was Raphael’s latest experiment proving too much, and not being able to stop unless he wanted to experience even more pain, even if he was tearing himself to shreds, ripping into his organs, breaking his own bones in the process of obeying. It was Michael’s cold disdain every time she touched him, wondering why she even bothered when it was obvious that she hated it just as much as he did, if not more. It was Ochale cornering him with a handful of vouchers he’d swindled from his fellow archivists and demanded Aziraphale satisfy them all at once. It was Chamuel reclining, ambrosia in hand, wanting Aziraphale to put on a show with one or more of their other slaves, or even with their free underlings, sometimes. It was sobbing soundlessly, his voicebox already paralyzed so as not to cause a distraction, as Jophiel sculpted horns out of his skull, because she wanted to see what he'd look like as a demon. It was Uriel’s cool outsourcing of the punishments he’d earned but she didn’t want to administer herself, never knowing what it would be much less who would administer it. It was his corporation kneeling in the training hall, Raguel as deeply intertwined with his celestial being as it was possible for angels to be intertwined, looking for something to break him and not being able to find it because there was no part of him that was not already broken.

It was the eyes of every free member of the Host upon him when he had to go out into public areas, and the things they no longer bothered to whisper about him. It was trying to explain how things worked to new arrivals when he knew full well that they weren’t going to listen to him, that they would rather cling to their disdain and be beaten. It was listening as someone else was beaten, or fucked, or picked upon, and feeling the crushing guilt of his relief at not being the one experiencing it at the moment. It was crying out to God for pity and having his punishment doubled for having the audacity to try to plead for Her mercy.

It was knowing, every time he heard of it, every time he _saw_ it, that every slave who Fell wasn’t going to freedom, or peace, or even oblivion. They were going to Hell, where things were worse. It was knowing that one day he would join them in their torment.

It was knowing that he was lucky, all things considered. He had value as a commodity, if not worth as a person; he had utility to others, if no purpose of his own. He was lucky. He had to be. It wasn’t divine favor that kept him raised up from the pits, and certainly wasn’t his own virtue that kept his wings from burning black. It was luck. He was lucky.

That was the worst of it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's safe to look now guys! This is the first Aziraphale making friends in Hell chapter- some new, and one old. 
> 
> ...still no Crowley, though he'll show back up in the next chapter.

The moment Aziraphale took that first turn on his way back to the entrance he began to hear singing, and he found the source just past what would have been a second. The was a door set into the wall a good handspan above the floor, propped open with an ornately carved- though none-too-gently worn- piece of granite in the shape of what might have been supposed to be a lion, and inside the room itself he could see a man-shaped being sorting through several bits of parchment, singing idly to himself. Not wanting to be rude, Aziraphale hesitated, and then knocked on the doorframe.  
  
The man turned to him with more curiosity than urgency, and smiled. “Oh, you’re the new guy, right?”  
  
“Erm,” Aziraphale replied. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting from his interruption, but this was definitely not it. “Yes, I suppose I am.”  
  
“And here I was just beginning to think Selia made you up,” he said. He walked over to the threshold. “Muhammad,” he introduced himself, pressing his hand to his chest before offering it to Aziraphale to shake, which Aziraphale did briefly. “And no, not that one, I don’t know where you Christians got the idea the Muhammad was in Hell from.”  
  
“I- I- I-” Aziraphale stammered, torn between replying _I should hope not._ and _I’m not Christian._  
  
“Muhammad ibn Ammar,” he continued over Aziraphale’s attempts at speech. “I lived in al-Andalus, when everything was all taifas. I was born in Shilb, spent most of my life in the service of Ishbiliya, and ended up dying in Mursiyah.”  
  
“Oh, you’re human,” Aziraphale realized.  
  
“Yes. You’re not?”  
  
“No. I’m- I _was_ an angel. I’m not really sure if I still count,” Aziraphale admitted.  
  
“You didn’t Fall?” Muhammad asked.  
  
“No I- I think I would have noticed that,” Aziraphale replied. “I don’t think so, no. I- I didn’t Fall.”  
  
“Pushed?” Muhammad suggested. “That’s how Uzza always put it.”  
  
“ _Uzza_?” Aziraphale repeated, all caution forgotten. “Uzza- are they- you know them?”  
  
“Well, she’s been a she most recently, but yes,” Muhammad told him. “She comes down here with Az every once in a while when they’re being reassigned to a new location. They were down here recently- planning to do something hinky in Garnatah. Or, Granada now, whatever.”  
  
“But she’s all right?” Aziraphale asked. “They both are?”  
  
“Yes,” Muhammad told him, looking thoughtful. “Do you know them?”  
  
“We’re friends,” Aziraphale told him. “That is- before they Fell. We were friends, then.”  
  
Muhammad frowned. “You haven’t told me your name.”  
  
“I haven’t?” Aziraphale said, startled. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s terribly rude of me, I- Aziraphale. I’m Aziraphale.”  
  
Muhammad’s eyes narrowed. “Zira?” he asked.  
  
Aziraphale flinched at the name. “I- well. That’s the nickname the Watchers used for me, yes.”  
  
“Fuck my dead bones,” Muhammad said. “Do they know you’re down here?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” Aziraphale replied, more than a little confused by the reaction. “They’ve mentioned me, I take it?”  
  
“Mentioned you? They’ve been worried sick,” Muhammad told him. “If you haven’t heard from any of them then they must not have been told that you’re down here. They’d be throwing you a party, if they knew.”  
  
Aziraphale did not quite know what to do with that information, so he changed the subject. “I’ve finished my assigned room.”  
  
“The whole room?” Muhammad asked, shocked. “Didn’t you just get here last week?”  
  
“Well, Dagon showed me to my assigned room just about five days ago, so. I just. I was wondering what happens next? Should I ask for another assignment, or-”  
  
“Tell you what, if you’ve finished with your room you can come in here and help me with mine,” Muhammad said, holding out his hand again. Aziraphale took it, and let himself be pulled into the room.  
  
They worked for a few hours. Muhammad did most of the talking, save for when Aziraphale was explaining how he’d performed a certain miracle to ease their work- his own abilities in that area were just beginning to blossom, and he was keen to learn more. When he wasn’t asking Aziraphale for help with that, he spoke about the life he’d lived.  
  
He’d been a poet, apparently. And an assassin. The lover of the Emir and later the Caliph of Ishbiliya. (“Another Muhammad,” he said. “Still not that one: Al-Mu’tamid Muhammad ibn Abbad.”) He’d been a vizier, an exile, a prime minister and then things had started to go sour.  
  
“I tried to break away, and named myself the Caliph of Mursiyah,” Muhammad told him. “I had a glorious reign of exactly one day before being deposed.”  
  
His former lover, the al-Mu'tamid Muhammad, had strangled him in his prison cell shortly thereafter.  
  
And, shortly after Muhammad finished telling his tale to Aziraphale, a woman-shaped being poked her head in the door. “It’s half past the piss-faced imp, we’re probably headed to The Broken Shaft if you-” She began, and then blinked, and shifted her gaze from Muhammad to Aziraphale. “Hey, you’re the new guy.”  
  
“Yeah, this is Aziraphale,” Muhammad said. “He came here all the way from Heaven.”  
  
“Huh,” she said. “Did you Fall or did you defect?”  
  
“Defect?” Aziraphale repeated back, mind boggling.  
  
“Neither, I don’t think?” Muhammad answered for him. “But you know what he is? The Watcher’s Zira.”  
  
“Seriously?” the woman replied. Another woman poked her head in, and pulled a man in alongside her.  
  
“I- yes?” Aziraphale replied, when it became obvious that they were looking for him for confirmation.  
  
“Yeah, come on, we’re definitely going to The Broken Shaft,” the first woman said. “Gadri will be there drinking if they don’t have him out on assignment.”  
  
Gadri. _Gadreel_. He’d been on the same rotation schedule as Aziraphale, and they’d often spent their rest years together, not doing much but cuddling together, more or less asleep, on whichever of their assigned bunks was deemed the softest. He’d been the last of the Watchers to Fall. Aziraphale had wept for days when he heard that he’d Fallen, and no threat of pain nor application thereof had managed to make him stop.  
  
He followed Muhammad out in a daze, only belatedly realizing something. “Oh! We didn’t finish your room.”  
  
The four humans stopped and stared at him. “Don’t worry about it,” Muhammad told him. “Milithe is five weeks behind, and she’s eons ahead of the rest of us.”  
  
“But won’t you- I mean. Won’t you be punished, if the work’s not done?” Aziraphale asked, looking between them. None of them seemed worried- indeed, they had already begun to move again.  
  
“Bah. Not really. Selia might shout a bit, but unless we get _really_ behind this is just sort of expected. Hopefully the fact that you’re an angel means that you’ll be judged to a different standard than us. Milithe’s been making us look bad.”  
  
The woman who had first poked her head in the door snickered. “Don’t sound so sour about it,” she said, bumping against Muhammad.

Introductions were made along the way. Milithe had lived during around the early part of the sixth century AD, where she had made a living as a cunning woman- herbalists and folk healers with a somewhat pagan bent, though she considered herself Christian- just as her mother and her mother’s mother had before her. That’s what landed her in trouble, in a way. Her mother had been put to death as a witch the year before Milithe’s death, and she’d rather lost her head over it.  
  
“We were tolerated when we were making sure their bastard blow-bys weren’t going to take,” Milithe explained. “But the moment one of their wives came knocking on our door hoping we could put her out of the family way it was all _thou shalt not suffer a witch to live_ this and _the blood of Abel_ that. So what happens when the poor girl gets pregnant and doesn’t look liable to survive childbirth? Pendragon has the Lord Chancellor himself come running to me to beg for my assistance. I told him where to shove it, he sent his guards after me, I told them where to shove it, I refused to help even under pain of death and in the end the both of us died: the pregnant girl and I. I’m not sure the baby made it either, to be honest.” She shrugged. “Which- is honestly a pretty good reason to damn someone, when you think about it. The girl didn’t deserve to suffer, even if her royal pain of a husband did. He’s down here now. They gave me the chance to rough him up a bit when he arrived, but I didn’t even want to look at him by that point. We stick clear of one another. It’s better that way.”  
  
The other two people who were evidently in his work group introduced themselves with considerably less vitriol. The woman was Avital bat David, who had been a slave in Delphi for some years before purchasing freedom for herself and her daughters, at the cost of helping her owner kill his wife and frame his rival for the deed. The man was Rotem bar Shimon HaLevi, who had fought in the Bar Kokhba revolt, been captured, and spent the last few months of his life as a gladiator. What they each thought had damned them specifically they didn’t say- not yet, at least.  
  
The was also a supervisor they all shared, apparently, one apart from Dagon that was, or rather, between the five of them and the Lord of the Files. Selia was her name, and she had been dead for long enough that she looked to the others more like a being of celestial stock than human. She wouldn’t be joining them- she rarely did. She had other responsibilities  
  
“Of course, she’d made a deal with Dagon of some kind before she died,” Muhammad added. In her absence, he was undoubtedly the leader of the bunch, despite being the most recently deceased. “The rest of us just kind of sinned our way down. That probably helps a bit in the power department. This is it.”  
  
There was no written sign above the building, but there could be no mistaking which one it was. A spear with a broken shaft was mounted onto what looked like driftwood above the door: a holy weapon, incongruous and more than a little frightening in the banal dismality that made up the thoroughfares of Hell the building was sat upon.  
  
Aziraphale was pretty certain that he recognized that spear, though he couldn’t place who it had belonged to. Someone he’d been in Eden with, he thought, though that didn’t make sense. Nearly everyone he’d been in Eden with was enslaved or worse. Quite a few had Fallen by now- but how would one of the Fallen get their hands on a holy weapon? Even if they had managed to hide their weapon away before being apprehended, it would have Fallen with them, become an unholy thing just as its master did.  
  
He followed the other’s inside, pondering this conundrum. He wasn’t looking up, and was just barely aware of the others peering around the various shadowed corners, looking for someone.  
  
“Oi, Ithuriel!” Milithe called. “Is Gadri in?”  
  
“No,” came the reply. Aziraphale’s head snapped up. “Why? Do you need him for something?”  
  
Ithuriel had been one of the guardians of Eden. They’d been one of _the_ guardians, Cherub, and later, Principality of the Southern Gate, as a matter of fact. Aziraphale had known them quite well, once: together they had discovered that he liked the taste of pears and that they really did not like the taste of pears at all, and together they had been demoted. They’d drifted apart after that, and Aziraphale had lost contact with them entirely after his arrest. He’d last heard of them during the audit before last, when they’d showed up on the list of being Uriel had slated for enslavement. They hadn’t made it out of Raguel’s training hall. Aziraphale had thought that meant that they were dead.  
  
But Ithuriel was not dead, it seemed. It seemed as though they were bartending in Hell. They stood there, hand over their mouth, milk-pale freckles standing out against dusky brown skin, their long glossy hair in a shade of blue so dark that many would mistake it for black in this light obscuring their eyes.  
  
Or, someone with their corporation did, at least.  
  
But, no, Aziraphale couldn’t even believe that for the amount of time it took to complete the thought. One metaphysical stretch of his remaining wings, one glance with eyes he so rarely used, that was all it took. No being could fake their celestial appearance so well, he was quite sure of that: and he was equally sure that even if they could, they wouldn’t want to fake the scars of demotion he could clearly see, stark and angry even more than five thousand years after they’d been inflicted.  
  
Something else that couldn’t be faked: they very clearly hadn’t Fallen.  
  
“Aziraphale?” they asked.  
  
“Ithuriel,” he replied. “How?”  
  
His legs were shaking. Someone, probably Muhammad, guided him over to the bar and into one of the stools. He spun a little bit on it before being steadied.  
  
“How?” he croaked out again. “How are you here?”  
  
“How am I here?” they asked, laughed. They removed their hand from their mouth, and placed it on Aziraphale’s. “How are you here? You didn’t Fall- did you escape?”  
  
“I-” Aziraphale began, and found he could speak no further. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I didn’t-” Words failed him again.  
  
“Hey,” Ithuriel said, giving his hand a squeeze. “It’s okay.”  
  
It really wasn’t. “I thought you were dead. I thought- _abominable failure to meet standards_ , they said. It’s- and I didn’t even _warn_ you.”  
  
“No, don’t- you didn’t have a choice, no one’s expecting you to warn anyone,” Ithuriel said, which was a lie. Every time his handler was in charge of an audit, angels would come up to him and ask if they were on the list. Most of the time he was able to look them in the eye and tell them that as far as he knew they were safe, and those few times he hadn’t, he’d had to content himself with the fact that he was such a poor liar that the truth was evident anyway. “You tried that, you and Pene and Kokab. They made us watch, when they caught you. You couldn’t have warned anyone after that.”  
  
Aziraphale opened his mouth, searching for words he could say, but found that there were none. There was, just barely, the ability to not break into tears.  
  
“He just got here last week,” Muhammad said from behind him.  
  
“Yeah, I can tell,” Ithuriel said. They gave his hand one last squeeze before pulling it away. “Well, you’re in luck, Aziraphale. Tradition dictates that new arrivals get one free drink. Any preferences?”  
  
“There was a drink that was popular when I was last on Earth,” Aziraphale said, quite relieved at the change in topic. “Sikaru, it was called.”  
  
“Beer,” Ithuriel said. “That’s the closest thing being brewed these days: beer. It’s changed a lot over the years. You can’t bake bread out of it these days, that’s for sure. Should I give you the latest version?”  
  
“By all means,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Here,” Ithuriel said, sliding a mug of something topped with foam towards him. “Monks in Bohemia brew this. They started adding this plant called hops into the mix a couple of centuries back- it stops the beer from going bad, though it does give it a bit of a bitter taste.”  
  
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, not quite sure what to make of that information. “And no straw?”  
  
“No need, it’s not thick enough to need a filter,” Ithuriel told him.  
  
“Fascinating,” Aziraphale said, and then, for the first time in more than four thousand years, he drank something other than water or ambrosia. “Oh. Oh goodness me, this does not taste like sikaru at all.”  
  
“Do you hate it?” Ithuriel asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, already raising the mug to his lips for another sip. “Ask me again when I’ve finished.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Muhammad (ibn Ammar) was a real person, and as far as I can tell, he was really like that. Avital is also based on a real person, though all we know of Antigona of Delphi is that she and her daughters were manumitted by way of being sold to Pythian Apollo (and, I presume, her parents didn’t give her a Greek name when she was born, hence the name I gave her). Rotem is essentially a reskinned minor character from Spartacus, with a backstory I wrote out for fanfic purposes and then never actually did anything with. Milithe has no historical basis, but is named for a minor character from one of my all-time favorite video games. Ithuriel found their way into this fic from Milton, who got them from earlier Kabbalistic writings. If you can guess who Selia is, you might be psychic.


	9. Chapter 9

It was a strange thing, the dynamic that developed between Hastur, Ligur, and Crowley.  
  
They hated one another at the start. Hastur and Ligur had power, and Crowley did not: Crowley quickly learned to fear his bosses, in particular the ways in which those two Dukes of Hell kept their underlings in line. Crowley, for his part, had the favor of Satan and seemed to earn it so, so easily, something which Hastur and Ligur, who had to grind away with the cutthroat politics of Hell, despised. Hatred blossomed between them as easily as a dandelion between cracks in a sidewalk, Hastur and Ligur on one side, Crowley on the other.  
  
And then came Solomon, and that changed everything.  
  
Crowley and Ligur, first, as they had to work together to free the others. The enforced closeness proved educational for both of them. Crowley learned a bit about how tenuous a Duke’s grip on power really was, while Ligur learned how difficult life on Earth could be if you didn’t- and couldn’t- just use your power to bulldoze your way through. Though Crowley could now understand that Ligur chose to save himself and his husband over all else, and Ligur could now understand why Crowley was always so constantly twitchy about some of the things that humanity did, it didn’t really engender any sort of tender feelings in one another.  
  
And then Hastur was rescued, along with all of the other demons, and that changed things all over again.  
  
It broke down like this.  
  
Hastur and Ligur loved one another, unconditionally, with the sort of fierce, flaming passion that would see Heaven, Hell, and all the world burn before they would see one another injured. They had Fallen for that love, which was deemed too selfish in the eyes of Heaven. It proved a barrier now, because Hastur was very much hurt and there wasn’t much Ligur could do about it.  
  
There was no love lost between Ligur and Crowley, but Crowley had proven himself to be a clever, reliable, and surprisingly discreet ally, and Ligur, against all of the lesser demon’s expectations, didn’t stab him in the back over it. When things needed doing around Hell in order for everyone to pretend that Hastur was doing well, and Ligur himself could not do them, he got into the habit of sending Crowley to do them. In this way, the favor Crowley was owed became an Arrangement, one which involved Ligur giving Crowley a very broad mandate for his activities on Earth, and even covering for him, in exchange for his assistance.  
  
“Look, word is that we’re not doing anything to encourage slavery anymore,” Ligur told him once. “So be careful with whatever the fuck it is that you’re doing in Messenia, yeah?”  
  
“We’re not?” Crowley asked, his nose wrinkling. “Since when?”  
  
“You know when,” Ligur growled.  
  
“Huh,” Crowley said, not put off in the slightest. “Is that a general policy, or a you policy?”  
  
“General. Prince Beelzebub decreed it herself.”  
  
“Huh,” Crowley said again.  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s just. We’re demons. I didn’t think we were supposed to care about other people’s pain.”  
  
Ligur shifted uncomfortably, knowing that the Ligur of a few centuries ago would have agreed with the sentiment, and found the implication infuriating. “We can care about some things,” he hedged. “The things Heaven doesn’t care about, for example.”  
  
“Huh,” Crowley said for a third time.  
  
He had to have known this already, Ligur realized. He would have never gone back for the others, for Hastur, otherwise.  
  
For a long moment, neither one of them said anything, engaged in a staring contest neither one of them could quite explain the origin of, but didn’t wish to lose. Then Crowley snapped, and the ink on the report that Ligur had called him down to discuss rearranged itself obligingly.  
  
“Probably best to be more honest, yeah? Anyway, I did definitely see someone from Upstairs hanging around Anaxidamus, so I might as well stick around these helots, and see if I can’t stop things from playing out as Heaven wants them to play out. Chairó!”  
  
And with that he left, leaving behind a report which now included much less skulking around with the Spartans, and a lot more trying to make life a little more bearable for the Messenians.  
  
As for Crowley and Hastur, well. There was even less lost love there than there was between Crowley and Ligur, if such a thing was even possible. But, after Solomon was dead, there was something between them that wasn’t between Hastur and Ligur, or Ligur and Crowley for that matter: understanding of what it was like to be a slave.  
  
They’d had very different experiences, of course. Crowley had never left Jerusalem, while Hastur had been shipped out to work on construction projects shortly after being summoned and bound, and hadn’t returned until after he’d been sentenced to die. Crowley had been allowed some relative comfort, so long as he was pretty and desirable and, quite crucially, tractable; Hastur hadn’t been comfortable at all. Crowley had been raped repeatedly, while Hastur had been spared that particular horror. Crowley had escaped, and gotten away clean, while Hastur’s first rebellion had ended very poorly for him indeed.  
  
Still, some things were the same. There was the same humiliation of being a transcendentally powerful being reduced to being a plaything of a few fetid specks of humanity. The fear of pain and punishment that never quite faded, that too was shared.  
  
There were very few people who were allowed near Hastur when he couldn’t pretend that he was fine. Crowley didn't make the short list, initially, but given how closely he was working with Ligur in those immediate post-Solomon days, it was inevitable that they would run into one another sooner than either of them would have cared to.  
  
Hastur was not having a good day. It wasn’t a _terrible_ day, but it was the kind of day where you took a look at yourself, realized that you would never again be what you once were, and felt very much like there would never be a good day again. It qualified as being not terrible on the grounds of Hastur being mobile and cognizant of his surroundings, but it didn’t have much else going for it.  
  
He went in search of Ligur, and found Crowley waiting by the office instead.  
  
“Hastur,” Crowley greeted him warily.  
  
“Crawly,” Hastur replied, because Crowley hadn’t changed his name yet.  
  
“Should I give my report to you, then?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Do I look like I’m here for your report?” Hastur snarled.  
  
“Well, you’re here, and this is generally where I give my reports,” Crowley retorted.  
  
Hastur sneered, and let that be his reply.  
  
“How are your feet?” Crowley asked, after a moment.  
  
“How do you think they are?”  
  
“Still painful, I’d guess,” Crowley replied, which wasn’t what Hastur had expected. “That bastard made me twirl all over the temple when it was completed. I couldn’t have been in there for more than an hour, and I had red hot stabbing needle pains in my feet for months afterwards.”  
  
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Hastur admitted.  
  
“Are they getting any better, though?” Crowley asked.  
  
“They’re no longer made of charcoal, if that’s what you mean.”  
  
“It kind of was, yeah.”  
  
Hastur let out a laugh- short and bitter, but a laugh nonetheless- just as Ligur walked in. Crowley found himself on the shortlist from there on out.  
  
And there was something new shared by Hastur and Ligur in all of this: they owed Crowley a debt, and neither one of them could think of a thing they could do that could ever repay it.  
  
It was a hell of a thing to base any kind of relationship on, but they were in Hell. They made do.  
  
And so hatred and fear turned to understanding and a truce. The truce turned into trust. Fast forward more than a thousand years from there, and the three of them were surprisingly good friends.  
  
“Hastur, Ligur,” Crowley greeted them, slinking into the free chair and throwing their legs up to rest on the tabletop. “What’s the word, gentlemen?”  
  
They were meeting in Kutaisi, the capital of the Kingdom of Imereti, one of the vassal states of the Ottoman Empire, which was Crowley’s current assignment. It also wasn’t far from Erivan, where Ligur and Hastur had set up their Earthly base of operations.  
  
The three met up every few years, officially because Crowley technically worked for them, and really because sometimes it was good to gossip.  
  
Some of it was strategic- there was a peace treaty between the Ottomans and the Safavids, who ruled the city the two Dukes called home, but there was always the threat of a treaty breakdown, and an invasion. Some of it was business: the Sultanate of Women was just getting started, and Crowley was psyching themselves out to shift into a woman in order to get a piece of the action.  
  
And, of course, there was the small matter of business Downstairs.  
  
“Heaven tossed us another one,” Ligur said.  
  
“There’s a shocker,” Crowley grumbled.  
  
“This one’s different,” Hastur said. “He didn’t Fall, and he didn’t defect.”  
  
“Yeah, and Gabriel came all the way Downstairs to drop him off, too,” Ligur added.  
  
Crowley turned that information over in their mind. “Is he some kind of spy?”  
  
“No, no,” Ligur assured him. “I don’t think so. Not for Heaven, at least. He was Gabriel’s favorite chewtoy, the new guy. Beelzebub has been angling to get him Downstairs for years to pump him for information.”  
  
“How’s that going?”  
  
Hastur and Ligur shrugged.  
  
“He didn’t look up to giving out information,” Hastur said. “He didn’t look like he was up for anything but having a hot meal and sleeping for a year.”  
  
“Who’s got him now?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Dagon, I think,” Ligur said.  
  
“ _Dagon_?” Crowley asked, their nose wrinkling. “Dagon wasn’t enslaved. What are they playing at?”  
  
Hastur merely shrugged again, but Ligur replied with “I think they want him close to the Archives, so it’s easier to record whatever information they think he has.”  
  
“Well, that’s not going to help him any, is it?” Crowley asked. They waved, and the barmaid, who had developed something of a blind spot for the demon’s abuse of the furniture, suddenly appeared with meals they hadn’t bothered to go through the motions of ordering. “You’re going back after this right? Have all that Duke stuff to take care of, yeah?”  
  
“A Dukedom doesn’t run itself, unfortunately,” Hastur confirmed, already tearing into his very rare kababi.  
  
“Well, I’ve got some time to kill before I return to Istanbul as my own daughter,” Crowley said, raising a tankard to their lips. “You mind if I tag along? I’d like to see how the new guy’s doing for myself.”


	10. Chapter 10

Aziraphale was happy, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.  
  
Or, rather: he did feel happy, and he wasn’t sure he could trust that feeling.  
  
No, no, that wasn’t it either. He didn’t trust his happiness. That didn’t change the fact that he needed it.  
  
It was mostly necessary in a pragmatic way. Everyone here was being so _kind_ to him, so friendly and considerate. Happiness was an appropriate response to that, he knew, happiness and gratitude and reciprocation. It was _not_ suspicion and mistrust. Having the wrong reaction could prove painful, he knew that too. It was essential that he behave as he ought, especially if he wished to continue to enjoy being treated well.  
  
Once, Michael had given him a gift of a small blown-glass pyxis. Having previously been given six similar gifts only to have them taken away and destroyed before him in short order, he’d tearfully asked what he’d done wrong. A few hours of kneeling in the ground-up remains of his gift as his back was flayed open had driven the point home: Aziraphale was wrong. He was defective, and erroneous, and aberrant, and he only proved it by scorning the undeserved mercies shown to him, when he should be grateful for them, no matter how fleeting they might be.  
  
So he needed to be consistently happy, as a reaction to the consistently good treatment he received. It was a familiar, almost comforting concern, managing how he appeared to others, particularly when considered against the fact that he still didn’t know what the consequences for failure were.  
  
He knew better than to ask, though the temptation was growing stronger as the old staccato beat of _it’s worse in Hell_ now fought with Ithuriel’s quiet assertion that _Hell’s not as we were taught_. He still needed to know, he just wasn’t quite sure how to find out besides waiting and listening, and very carefully asking around the question.  
  
His first chance came when Dagon came to check on his progress at the end of the week. Aziraphale was waiting for them, kneeling properly on the floor. The lamps weren’t bothering him like they were before- the company, the food, and the drink had settled his mind somewhat.  
  
“You don’t have to kneel,” they told him, so he rose to his feet, suppressing the urge to wince at the pins-and-needles sensation in his legs.  
  
“I’ve finished the room, Lord Dagon,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“I can see that,” Dagon replied. “How does it measure up to Heaven’s Archives?”  
  
“In terms of the organizational system I used, or in terms of the information contained herein?”  
  
“The information.”  
  
So Aziraphale ran through all the major differences between what the records of Heaven showed, and the records of Hell, Dagon listening with hungry eyes. It didn’t occur to him until he was nearly finished that he might technically be committing treason.  
  
He faltered, and Dagon tilted their head. “Is that all?” they asked.  
  
“No,” Aziraphale said. Heaven had been the ones to bring him down here, and they could hardly have failed to notice all the information he’d been exposed to. It must not have been very important information, he supposed. “There is the matter of the Massacre at Béziers- Heaven is under the impression that that was your work too.”  
  
Dagon snorted. “That’s typical. You said that Gabriel oversaw the Inquisition of Toulouse?”  
  
Aziraphale nodded.  
  
“Did he happen to mention the Spanish Inquisition?” They asked.  
  
“Oh yes,” Aziraphale said. “He was quite put out that you corrupted...” His voice trailed off as Dagon shook their head.  
  
“Nothing to do with us either,” they said. “We had an agent in Seville when things started kicking off, and we had to send in an extraction team after him. He took one look at their methods and immediately began to drink every alcoholic substance within city limits.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Lord Dagon, but I don’t think I quite understood that,” Aziraphale told them.  
  
“The humans did it, no Heavenly inspiration or Hellish temptation necessary. Most of our agents above ground are busy either observing or influencing whatever it is they come up with themselves. Between Heaven’s entrance requirements and humanity’s own ability to inflict violence upon itself we don’t have to do much to ensure we win the most souls. We’ve even more or less stopped torturing the humans when they come down here. It’s easier and more effective to just make them face whoever they wronged in life until no one wants a go at them any more.”  
  
Aziraphale tried to slot this new information in with what he knew of Hell and found it wasn’t compatible with anything he’d learned in Heaven.  
  
But Milithe had said something about being given the chance to face her and her mother’s murderer, hadn’t she? And none of the human souls he’d seen thus far seemed to be in a state of serious torment. It was just dark and drab down here, for the most part.  
  
“If that’s it, I should show you to your next assignment,” Dagon said.  
  
“Yes, I think so. But, I, um- may I ask two questions, Lord Dagon?”  
  
“If you make it quick.”  
  
“Thank you, I - am I allowed out of the room, after I finish it? I must confess I did leave this one once I’d finished, I ended up finding another one of the archivists and helping him for a bit, and then we went out to a- a pub and-”  
  
“You can leave. Just try to finish the work before the week is out,” Dagon interrupted him irritably.  
  
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” Aziraphale said, relief washing over him. “And, um- would you like for me to keep a record of any discrepancies I notice between Heaven’s version of events and the ones in your records?”  
  
Dagon smiled broadly, their too many needle-sharp teeth on display. “That’s an excellent idea.”  
  
It became a pattern. He was told what to do. He was not told what the consequences of failure were. He did the work- and it was always easy to accomplish this within the time limit- and therefore did not find out what those consequences were. He was given more work at the end of the time limit. It was never much more than the previous week’s work- and occasionally it was less- and it was never difficult to finish.  
  
Yet.  
  
He knew full well that at some point he would be given a task that was beyond his abilities. It always happened, and just because it seemed like it was going to happen later rather than sooner didn’t mean that it wasn’t still inevitable.  
  
It was just who he was. He always ruined things.  
  
So, he needed to maintain his happy disposition, and he needed to know what was coming for him when the kid gloves came off. Asking Dagon was right out, unless he wanted to learn firsthand what the consequences of failure were. He hadn’t so much as seen Selia yet, so there was nothing to be done there. He did consider asking Ithuriel, but he wasn’t sure if they would feel compelled to report his questions- and he really didn’t want to know what would happen if they were obliged to report to someone other than Dagon, who would doubtlessly be incensed that he had seemingly tried to go behind their back to get information. That left his- peers? coworkers? The other archivists in his work group, at least- as his main source of information. This required regular interaction with them, which wasn’t the hardship he’d anticipated it being. He learned to divide each room he’d been given into six sections, the first five a bit bigger than the sixth, just in case he needed to do some kind of massive organization overhaul on the last day, and once he’d finished with the day’s work, he would go and seek out the others.  
  
He knew how to ingratiate himself with his handler’s underlings by now, but this was different. Many of the other angels, even the lower ranked ones who lived in perpetual fear of the next audit, tended to be dismissive, distrustful, and even disgusted by him. There wasn’t any of that here. Oh, he helped them with their work and showed them how to perform a few miracles to hurry things along, but that didn’t explain why they smiled at him and included them in their outings from the start. They treated him as an equal, and for his part Aziraphale found them to be extremely agreeable company.  
  
That was the not-pragmatic part of why this strange happiness he was experiencing was necessary. He was just so _tired_ of it all: of the fear, and the shame, and the unending misery that had been his existence for more than twenty-five hundred years. He liked these people, and they seemed to like him. He just needed that, he _needed_ to not be treated as a disgusting, disposable _thing_ for a time, even if it was only temporary.  
  
He didn’t want to place the others in any kind of conflict, and he didn’t want to risk their interactions becoming less generous, so he knew he had to proceed cautiously. He first broached the subject, carefully, oh-so-very-carefully, with Avital, the longest deceased and the quietest of the bunch. He was mindful of the risks, and made sure to phrase it as a general question about conditions in Hell, rather than anything specifically pertaining to him.  
  
“You know, they used to torture people,” she told him. “It wasn’t as widespread as people are being taught it is these days, but it happened. But then again, I only died maybe two hundred years after Solomon, so things were still sort of in transition.”  
  
“Dagon mentioned something about letting the humans do it?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Yeah, that started after me. I died, I ended up down here, one of the intake people already had some kind of file on me- I couldn’t read then, and I haven’t found it since so I don’t know what was on it- and they flipped through it, told me I suffered enough and moved me on to the employment office. Now they freeze you, wait until everyone you knew in life died, figure out who wronged you and who was wronged by you, and then basically let everyone sort themselves out. You can ask Muhammad about that- he ended up stuck in the same room with his lover/murderer for a whole year, I think, on top of everyone else.”  
  
Muhammad was the unofficial leader of their group, so Aziraphale was reluctant to go with him with anything, but talking to Milithe didn’t yield any answers and talking to Rotem yielded nothing but more questions.  
  
Milithe shrugged when he asked her about it. “They weren’t freezing people when I died, but otherwise it went pretty much as Avital said. I didn’t have anyone after me because anyone I harmed went straight to Heaven, I guess. They told me when Pendragon arrived down here, but I gave up my chance at him. He outlived me by decades, you know? I wasn’t quite so furious with him by the time he carked it. Besides, he made plenty of enemies in his life, there was probably a queue.”  
  
Rotem was more philosophical. “The question for me isn’t _why aren’t we being punished?_ so much as it is _is this really meant to go on for eternity?_ I was meant to be a priest, you know? About the time I attended yeshiva there was this huge debate over what the afterlife looked like, whether the resurrection would be physical or spiritual, whether the world to come was for Israel or for the righteous, and how long you could spend in Gehenna… people sort of figured that you wouldn’t spend long down here. A year was the period of time that was being floated.”  
  
“Ah,” said Aziraphale.  
  
“It just seems like a waste, you know? We still have the same sort of consciousness as we did in life- the same ability to feel emotions, process information, and change our habits and attitudes. That does make our time on Earth as a small portion of our existence- why would being physical make that the most important part?”  
  
“That is a good question,” Aziraphale admitted. “Perhaps it has something to do with having to resist temptations of the flesh when you have flesh that needs tending to. Not to eat to excess when you do need to eat to survive, not to fornicate to the exclusion of all else when procreation is on the table?”  
  
“Hm, I’m going to have to think on that one a bit.”

Eventually, Aziraphale simply had to break down and ask Muhammad about it.  
  
“Are you asking about how humanity gets punished, or are you asking about how you might be punished if you screw up?” Muhammad asked.  
  
None of the others had put it together, and Aziraphale hadn’t prepared anything to say about it. He just sat there and flushed, quite aware that if he tried to speak he would only splutter.  
  
“I’ve heard a bit about how it is in Heaven,” Muhammad said. “It sounds awful. Worse than it is down here, that’s for sure. It’s enough to make me glad I was damned.”  
  
Aziraphale didn’t quite know what to say to that, because he had a point. As anxious as he was about it- and as much as he didn’t believe that it would last- thus far his time in Hell had been extraordinarily better than his time in Heaven. He’d been down here for eight weeks, or near enough. There might be six days to a week down here but as Aziraphale had learned his third week here, there were thirty-six hours to a day in Hell, so the math worked out to actually been nine days per week when measured in hours... and all of that was besides the point. How many times, in _any_ given eight week period, could he have expected to be beaten in Heaven? How many times would he have been expected to spread his legs, or get on his knees? How many little humiliations, how many bruises, how many moments of wishing he could simply stop existing?  
  
_Rather a lot_ was the answer to all of those questions. All the more reason for him to figure out where the limits were here, and do his best to steer clear of them.  
  
“In answer to your question,” Muhammad said. “Yeah, I actually spent the first decade or so getting the shit repeatedly kicked out of me.”  
  
“A decade?” Aziraphale asked, shocked. “That seems like a long time.”  
  
Muhammad shrugged off the taken-aback expression on his face. “I was an assassin, and I was in politics, and I did more than my fair share of commanding armies as well. I hurt plenty of people. There’s a measure of fairness in them being able to get some kind of revenge on me for it, I suppose.”  
  
“I… suppose,” Aziraphale said doubtfully.  
  
“Well, that’s the system they have in place now, fair or not,” he continued. “It works well enough. I can’t imagine the mess there would be if the Fallen had to torture each soul individually. That’s why we’re so backed up here, you know? The intake paperwork takes priority, the idea being that the quicker we have everyone sorted out the quicker they can come join the workforce.”  
  
“So it’s purely utilitarian?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“I’m not sure about purely,” Muhammad admitted. “But it does the job, and I can’t really think of any better way to do it. I mean, what kind of objective measure of our wrongs could there be? If I had been asked before I died to take an account of my wrongs I would have put wine and buggery on the list, and apparently those are not particularly high on the list of things to punish. No one came after me for those specifically, at least, not even...”  
  
“Not even the other Muhammad,” Aziraphale finished for him.  
  
“Yeah. You’ll have heard about that, I guess. It’s sort of infamous,” Muhammad smiled bitterly. “Plenty of people are murdered by their lovers. Most, when reunited with them in the afterlife, do not go on to strangle one another for a month straight. And then there was the shouting, the recriminations, the crying…” He sighed. “I loved him, you know? He was my first and only great love. It was like wildfire. We were so young when we met- young enough for me to make myself into someone better suited to be his vizier. They say that more might be enjoyed with licking than with biting, but the emir of the strongest taifa in al-Andalus doesn’t invite you to share his pillow if you can’t use your teeth as well as your tongue. And so, I blamed him for what I’d become, never realizing that he was even younger than I, and had no idea, at first, what I was doing in his name,” He shook his head. “But eventually we started talking, actually talking, and we found that we could forgive one another after all. And that was it for me- he was the last person I had wronged. I was his first. He spent the next thirty years facing those he had wronged, because apparently you make more enemies as a caliph than you do when you’re his favorite. I was given the chance to speak with those who had wronged me, but I declined. There were very few people who didn’t overlap, and after facing al-Mu’tamid and the three of his sons that were down here what else could make an impact?” He waved his hand through the air, as though shooing away a fly. “I relinquished my claim to have vengeance upon them, and I was allowed to leave. The leaving… the leaving is important. It’s why it works, because the way things are done now, once you leave, you do not return, and you do not carry any grudges with you. You’re purged, if not of sin, then of guilt and shame. You might not have a clean slate, but whatever was written there has been so smudged that there is no hope of reading it. You can make of yourself as you like, within reason. Which is why I think you have nothing to fear, Aziraphale. You haven’t hurt anyone, have you?”  
  
“I- not willingly,” Aziraphale said, because there had been moments when he hadn’t been given a choice. Not when Chamuel had wanted a show, or Gabriel hadn't been up to delivering the number of lashes he deemed appropriate, or-  
  
“Then I don’t think it counts,” Muhammad told him. “There shouldn’t be any reason why anyone would want to hurt you, so you won’t be hurt.”  
  
It sounded so simple when he put it like that. If it hadn’t been at odds with thousands of years of experience, maybe he would have been able to believe it.  
  
As it was, he didn’t mean to give up after Muhammad’s speech, but he didn’t quite know how to proceed either. And there were a lot of distractions in Hell. Once you got past the general dank and poor lighting of the place, Hell was actually quite lively. There was music, sometimes, and very enthusiastic dancing. People seemingly spoke in every language yet developed on the Earth, and they debated, and they composed poetry and plays and prose to keep one another entertained. There were the sports Gabriel was so enamored of: wrestling and running and jousting. Muhammad was even teaching him to play chess, some distant descendant of the aashe game he had once so enjoyed. Every so often Ithuriel would close down their tavern and return a few days later with something new from Earth for them to sample. It was all nice, distractingly so, and he was so very very tired of being afraid.  
  
And then, one day, while they were all enjoying an after-work round at The Broken Shaft, three familiar faces walked into the tavern. Two belonged to the two demons who had escorted him to be healed, and then again to his room. And the third…  
  
“Ithuriel!” said Crowley, beaming broadly. Aziraphale started, nearly spilling his ale in the process. “You look lovely as always.”  
  
“Oh, don’t you start,” Ithuriel chided. “I’m not giving you any more freebies.”  
  
“Come on, not even a little one,” Crowley wheedled, batting their eyelashes. “Not even to make up for smiting me in the Garden a little?”  
  
“Ha! I stopped owing you for that when I let you make off with the last of the Falernian wine. Do you have any idea how much that doesn’t exist anymore?”  
  
“Well, yeah, I was there when they bottled it,” Crowley replied. Greetings done with, they turned around and surveyed the room.  
  
_There, you see?_ Aziraphale chided himself as Crowley’s eyes slid over them without pause. _They don’t even recognize you. And why should they?_  
  
That was when Crowley’s eyes snapped back to their table, narrowing in scrutiny before widening in recognition.  
  
_Oh bugger,_ Aziraphale thought. _They do recognize me._  
  
“No way!” Crowley said. Their beaming smile was, if anything, even wider than it had been when they’d greeted Ithuriel at the bar. “It’s you!”  
  
They were headed towards Aziraphale’s table now, and, not quite knowing what to do, he muttered some approximation of an excuse and darted out of the tavern.


	11. Chapter 11

It was at about this time that Beelzebub and Dagon sat down to discuss the matter of the Principality Aziraphale.  
  
It had been Beelzebub’s plan to bring him down here- or have him brought down, rather. As per usual it hadn’t taken much to convince Heaven to hand an asset over to Hell. They were, she was beginning to realize, so obsessed with their own notions of purity, and so convinced of the necessity of removing flaws from the Host that they had made themselves quite easy to manipulate.  
  
So Beelzebub ‘let slip’ that Hell got a great deal of intelligence from the slaves Heaven so carelessly encouraged to let Fall. She remarked upon Aziraphale whenever Gabriel brought him with- and had to then rebuff him when Gabriel offered him up to be raped a further three times. It took that many tries for the Archangel to get it through his skull that her interest in the slave wasn’t sexual. Once he began to wonder about what shape that interest _was_ , he quickly found that she’d already provided him with an answer.  
  
Armageddon would be coming, sooner rather than later now: prophecies flew thick and fast, human empires expanded with ever-greater reaches and ever more destructive weapons. A total destruction of the world seemed imminent, and once possible, it was expected that Lucifer would sire the human hands that would begin the process. Each side was preparing for it. Heaven’s preparations doubtlessly involved slaves, and this slave in particular: the longest-standing of the lot, the favorite of one Archangel and valued by at least one other for his skill in paperwork.  
  
He would have insights into those preparations, and it would be those insights Gabriel would be moved to protect. He would not care about the other insights- the infighting Aziraphale had so blithely revealed to her the first time they spoke with one another, the patterns of thought and action he doubtlessly would have observed and used to keep himself from more harm than was strictly necessary. Gabriel, meanwhile, likely didn’t realize those insights existed.  
  
There was a risk that he would protect Heaven by ordering Aziraphale’s obliteration, but it was negligible. There had been no executions recounted amongst the horrors of Heaven’s punishments, and when they had their skirmishes with Heaven over those who defected from their ranks the angels did not strike to kill. They sent retrieval teams, not death squads.  
  
No, the more likely option- and the one that had come to pass- was that Heaven would simply wash their hands of Aziraphale and send him down to Hell. And so now, here he was, and here was Dagon with the first bits of intelligence he could provide them with.  
  
“Did you have any trouble getting the information out of him?” Beelzebub asked.  
  
“No,” Dagon replied. “He volunteered to write it down after the first week, actually.”  
  
“Good,” she replied, flipping idly through the pages of the first book. “He’s settling in, then?”  
  
“I’m not sure I would say that,” they said.  
  
“What?” Beelzebub asked.  
  
“You said that he used to play his masters off one another, manage their reactions, even manipulate things a little so he would end up less hurt.”  
  
“Yes. That's part of why I wanted him down here.”  
  
“Well I’m not convinced that he isn’t doing just that now, with us.”  
  
Beelzebub considered that for a moment. “Do you think the information is good?”  
  
“Yes. I started him out with the Cathars, and have had him bouncing between the latter-day Gnostic sects and Heavenly activity in Frankish areas ever since, so there’s been plenty to cross-reference. So far there haven’t been a lot of inconsistencies, and there’s been a lot of detail for him to misremember, have misheard, or simply not have been privy to. Either they drilled him on several thousand years worth of misinformation on the off chance that we’d ask him instead of making him the focal point of an orgy of torture-rape, or this is what it looks like and he’s telling the truth.”  
  
“Does he think we’re going to toss him back to Heaven at some point?” she asked, because what Aziraphale had told her of it certainly made it seem like he was always balancing his current owner’s foibles and peccadillos against whoever might own him next.  
  
“I doubt it. I don’t think he would be giving me this much detail about their Earthly agents if that were the case.”  
  
“So do you think he’s manipulating us somehow?”  
  
“Not beyond doing his best to ensure that we all know how useful he can be to us. He’s even teaching some of the human souls he works with how to refine their miracles,” Dagon told her.  
  
“So what is the problem?” Beelzebub asked.  
  
Dagon took a bite out of the kebab Beelzebub had brought with her. They ate with a delicacy that surprised many when they first observed it, chewing thoroughly to avoid getting food stuck in their many needle-sharp teeth. “The problem,” they said at long last. “Is that he’s been asking questions about how we punish people.”  
  
“So?” Beelzebub demanded. “Is that not common?”  
  
“It’s common for _humans_ ,” Dagon told her. “But not for those of celestial stock. Look: the Fallen are angry. It’s why most of them Fell. They Fall, and for the first time in centuries there’s no binding on them, and they’re willing to do just about anything to keep it that way. If that means they torture someone, then fine, there’s at least a chance that they deserve it anyway. Now, the defectors also assume that we torture, but it’s not like Heaven keeps its hands clean these days, and they’re willing to overlook it as long as we don’t ask them to participate. That’s why most of them defected- they didn’t want to torture, or be tortured.” They took a swig of pomegranate juice before adding, almost as an afterthought. “Aziraphale’s asking like the humans ask. He’s asking like he expects to be strung up by his wings and beaten with a morningstar at the slightest provocation.”  
  
“There hasn’t been anything to suggest it.” It wasn’t a question. Beelzebub kept an eye on such incidents. They were few and far between by now, but back in the day, when everything had still been settling after Solomon, they had been rather common. Demons, particularly high-ranking ones who hadn’t been enslaved, had felt it was their right to meet out punishments or simply vent their frustrations out as they willed. It had taken time for things to settle into their current pattern- time for the majority of lesser-ranked demons to realize that they could swarm the offender and tear him to shreds if they chose. She didn’t delude herself that there weren’t any Lords who felt as though they should have the right to hurt who they pleased, but by now they damn well knew better than to try.  
  
“No. And he’s gone out often enough to be able to see for himself that we don’t exactly keep pillories lying around the place,” Dagon agreed. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not sinking in. He’s still very, very afraid.”  
  
Which was just fine and dandy if he stayed working as an archivist, but that wasn’t Beelzebub’s long term plan. There were plenty of uses for the defectors- for the unFallen, as she sometimes thought of them- especially on Earth, but they always had to contend with the possibility of needing to fend off a Heavenly retrieval team. But Heaven had relinquished their claim over Aziraphale, and they could no more send a retrieval team for him than they could for one of the Fallen. That opened up a world of possibilities.  
  
None of those possibilities could be realized unless Aziraphale could- and she thought the phrase with the full weight of irony behind it- be not afraid.  
  
“Maybe I should talk with him,” Beelzebub said.  
  
“He’ll spend the entire time calling you Prince Beelzebub, half-bowing every other sentence, barely meeting your eyes and flinching at sudden movements,” Dagon predicted. “Look: he’s been a slave since Solomon. _Since Solomon_ , Beelzebub.” Since Solomon, in this case, meant: since a period of great social upheaval that led to Hell being the place it was today. “We might have misjudged how much time he’ll need to recover from that.”  
  
“Still. I’d like to talk to him. Do you know where he is right now?”  
  
“Out drinking, probably. The other members of his cohort drag him out every day. He nurses one drink, spends an hour or so helping to clean the tavern afterwards to pay for it, goes back to his room to change his clothes, and then goes right back to work,” Dagon told her. They turned around, and began rummaging through one of the cabinets behind their desk. “Give me a moment and I’ll know exactly where.”  
  
They brought out a small scrying mirror, made of polished obsidian with a knife-sharp edge running along the top. Dagon pressed their thumb to the edge, blood trickling down the mirror, and squinting down at what that revealed.  
  
“Huh,” they said.  
  
“Huh?” Beelzebub asked.  
  
“Well, he’s not drinking anymore, but he’s not alone either,” they said, turning the mirror to face her.  
  
At that time the door to Dagon’s office swung inward with a loud bang, revealing the forms of Dukes Ligur and Hastur.  
  
“My Lords-” Ligur began, but was cut off by Hastur screeching “Neither one of you could be bothered to tell him he was free?” There was no doubt that he was speaking of Aziraphale. After all, Hastur did not often concern himself with human souls on this end of things, and there was only one celestial who had arrived in Hell recently enough to warrant explaining anything.  
  
There was a moment of silence. Back in the bad old days Beelzebub would have discorporated Hastur on the spot for his insolence. She wouldn’t have thought she had a choice in the matter, and honestly, probably would not have thought that much of it at all. As it stood, she merely let the stab of annoyance fade away without revenge.  
  
“Yeah,” Ligur agreed. “That.”  
  
Beelzebub and Dagon exchanged looks.  
  
“You know,” Dagon said, with the sort of good humor that only manifests when the situation really isn’t funny at all. “That explains a lot.”


	12. Chapter 12

There were many reasons why Aziraphale ran, not that he was thinking in terms of reasons when he made the decision to leave. It was an instinct somewhat akin to that of self-preservation, one that had been mostly beaten out of him by this point but would still rear its head on occasion, when he was under great stress.  
  
And he was under a great deal of stress: the sudden reversal of fortune he couldn’t quite trust, the punishments he had seen no evidence of but could feel looming before him, the new faces, the old faces, the alien structure of society that left him grasping for anything that might tell him what it was he was meant to do. This wasn’t what he was used to. This wasn’t what he thought being in Hell would be like. It was all a bit much. To see Crowley again, on top of all of that, was a breaking point he hadn’t known he had.  
  
He didn’t go far. Just across the street, where he wedged himself in the small alley between two of the other buildings that had been sprung up like mushrooms from a fallen tree. He breathed for a moment. He tried to keep it steady.  
  
“Aziraphale?”  
  
That was Milithe, probably wondering what had gotten into him.  
  
“AZIRAPHALE!”  
  
And that was Crowley. That was Crowley, looking for him.  
  
That was Crowley, looking for the angel they’d kept running into during the first millennium, more like. Aziraphale felt with a sudden, piercing keenness, how little of that angel was left.  
  
That was one reason, right there. Crowley was the only one who had known him before the Great Audit. He and the other guardians of Eden had been together for a relatively short period of time and then they’d all drifted apart after the demotion, and he could scarcely say that they knew him any more than he knew them. The Watchers he’d befriended in that strange two thousand year period after the Audit before Heaven had adopted slavery, when they hadn’t been free but neither had they been owned. But Crowley had known him as he’d been as a free angel, and had known him better than perhaps anyone else. They’d be able to tell what a terrible state he was in.  
  
He peered out. Milithe and Crowley were talking, looking concerned. Behind them, the two demons from his first day in Hell joined them. He stepped back into the alleyway, huddling in on himself.  
  
“Aziraphale!”  
  
He didn’t recognize that voice. Not that that should have surprised him. Everyone knew him, or knew of him, or knew some version of his sad, pathetic story- some version that had been told to make him seem a great deal more clever and crafty and strong than he actually was. He had no idea how that had happened. Everyone in Heaven had known of him too, but they’d been decidedly less complimentary- and, Aziraphale thought, more honest. He wasn’t anything special. He hadn’t done much. He’d just sat there and let other people do as they pleased with him for longer than anyone else.  
  
He was still doing it, more or less. He’d been treated well here, and the work was agreeable, and his fellow archivists were friendly, and none of that was because of him. He had no power here, no way to influence anyone. It was all being done at the indulgence of someone else’s whim- and he didn’t even know who’s whim it was, whether it was Dagon’s or Beelzebub’s or if even Satan himself might have a hand in it- and he didn’t know why, he didn’t know their reasoning for it- and he didn’t know when it would _stop_.  
  
And it would stop. Of course it would. How could it not? He could see himself, huddled in on himself beneath three layers of clothing, cowering in the dark like the broken useless thing he was as the people who had treated him well (and they had, they were, did it really matter that it wasn’t real, so long as he wasn’t being hurt because of it?) called out for him.  
  
He should step forward and reveal himself. He should.  
  
“I found him!” That was Crowley again, their golden eyes shining faintly in the murk of the alley.  
  
He should make some sort of reply. He should.  
  
“Are you alright?” Crowley asked, pitching their tone a bit lower.  
  
_Lie, lie,_ Aziraphale thought furiously, but he couldn’t think of a single lie to tell. “I don’t think I am, actually,” he said after a moment, when he began to fear that a lack of answer would be even worse than the truth.  
  
One of the demons that had escorted him during his first day here- the pale one- came up behind Crowley and cleared his throat. “That’s the new guy.”  
  
“Yeah, I figured,” Crowley said, their expression dimming. “Do you have rooms, Aziraphale? I mean, you must have rooms, someone would have assigned you something.”  
  
Aziraphale found he couldn’t quite speak. He managed to nod.  
  
“I think I remember where they are,” said the pale demon, at the same time as Muhammad piped up with “I can show you where they are.”  
  
“Right, yeah, let’s get you out of here then,” Crowley said, holding out their hand. It took Aziraphale a moment to realize that he was meant to take it, but eventually he did, and allowed the demon to tug him along out into the main street.  
  
The others encircled them: his work group, the other two demons. There was a lot of whispering on the streets from the other denizens of Hell, but they kept their distance. Once he’d taken it, it became very difficult not to clutch onto it like a lifeline, in spite of himself.  
  
He couldn’t help but recall what he’d assumed would happen, the first time he’d been shown to his rooms, and some part of him feared it still, that this would be the moment he would finally be put back into his place. More of him was mortified that the others might be able to tell, somehow: especially Crowley.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Crowley said, their voice still pitched so low that Aziraphale had to struggle to hear them.  
  
Once he did hear them, he wasn’t sure he’d done it correctly. “You’re… what? Sorry? What ever for?”  
  
Crowley’s fingers tightened around his. “I didn’t- I was worried, when you stopped showing up. And then there was all that and Solomon, I just- I wanted to think that maybe they hadn’t caught you, that maybe you were just reassigned and were doing paperwork Up There.”  
  
“Well, there was a lot of paperwork involved,” Aziraphale said faintly, not quite sure what else he would say. “There still is.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I heard you were working for Dagon now. How’s that?”  
  
“It’s nice. Everyone’s been very kind. It’s been- it’s been nice,” Aziraphale said, and then found he could say little else without bursting into tears. “I’m sorry, can we just- I don’t think I can talk right now.”  
  
“Yeah, sure. Of course, angel.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Crowley gave his hand another squeeze.  
  
He had pictured a reunion with Crowley, but not like this. He pictured it the same way he used to picture punishments before they were administered, as a way to brace himself against the coming pain. He’d pictured disgust, cruelty, pity… this might be pity, but in his experience pity didn’t come with an apology, nonsensical and strange as it had been.  
  
They made it to his room, and then there was a bit of a whispered argument as it turned out that all eight of them weren’t going to be able to fit inside of it. Eventually Milithe and Rotem left, and, after a bit of jostling around, Avital and Muhammad ended up sitting next to him on the bed, while the two demons from his first day leaned against the wall, and Crowley tried to pace in what little floorspace remained. For a long time no one said anything.  
  
“So,” said the pale demon with the frog at long last. “You know the new guy.”  
  
“Yeah, we had an anti-discorporation agreement, back in the day,” Crowley replied.  
  
There was another, shorter pause. Then the darker demon with the lizard snorted, and the pale one with the frog let out a high-pitched giggle.  
  
“That’s the story and we’re sticking to it,” Crowley said severely, which only caused the other two demons to laugh outright. “Oh come on, no one says anything to Samael or Lilith about whatever it was they were doing before Samael defected.”  
  
“No, of course not,” said the lizard demon. “They’re the most terrifying lesbians in Hell. They could say that they’d spent their time giving free will to aardvarks and no one would say anything about it.”  
  
Crowley dropped their head down to glare at the floor. “Why do I bother?” they asked.  
  
“Beats me,” said the frog demon cheerfully.  
  
Next to him, Avital’s hand had found his. On his other side, Muhammad was sitting upright, thinking at near-audible speeds.  
  
Aziraphale cleared his throat. “What happens now?” he asked.  
  
“I don’t know, exactly,” Crowley said. “I came down here because those two idiots-”  
  
“We’re still your bosses, Crowley,” the frog demon pointed out.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, write me up during my next performance review,” Crowley said dismissively before turning back to Aziraphale. “Anyway, they told me that we’d gotten someone new, and that Dagon was looking after them- which isn’t normal, at all. Normally you get someone who’s actually been enslaved to help show you the ropes as you get used to being free again.”  
  
“But I’m not!” Aziraphale protested, the words bursting out without his permission. “I’m not- I didn’t Fall, I didn’t defect, I didn’t escape, I didn’t do anything to leave Heaven at all. I’m still a slave. They just… gave me away!” He clamped his free hand over his mouth, to stop any further words, and the bout of ugly laughter that wanted to follow the ones he had just spoken.  
  
_They gave me away._ There it was, the punchline to his existence, told to perhaps the one being in all Creation that would get the joke.

Crowley, however, wasn’t laughing. They looked down at Aziraphale, their eyes wide and horrified.  
  
“What?” croaked the frog demon.  
  
“Is this why you’ve been asking about how Hell tortures people?” Muhammad asked urgently, as Avital’s hand tightened around his to the point of pain.  
  
Aziraphale forced his hand down from his face and buried it in the material of his robe to keep it there. “Yes,” he said. “I just- I wanted to know what to expect, when-”  
  
“Hang on, hold it, just- Aziraphale,” Crowley said, nearly babbling. “Aziraphale, you’re free, you’re as free as anyone else down here. Hell doesn’t allow the keeping of slaves.”  
  
For some reason, that only made Aziraphale feel angry- an emotion he hadn’t actually felt in a very long time, and wasn’t quite sure how to handle. “Well, they must allow it, otherwise what am I doing here?” he snapped.  
  
“That’s a good question. Half! Half of a good question, because I don’t know what you’re doing here but I know you’re not a slave.”  
  
“But-”  
  
“It’s true,” Avital said. Her knuckles were white as she grasped Aziraphale’s hand. “The moment you became a citizen of Hell you became free. That’s what they told me when I came down here, and the same holds true for you.”  
  
“Not necessarily,” Aziraphale said. “Humans and celestial beings are held to different standards, and-”  
  
“No, it’s true,” said the frog demon, his lip curled into a sneer. “No slaves in Hell- no _slavers_ in Hell, not after we’re through with them. No one would dare try it.”  
  
“If Dagon was holding you- if they made you think they owned you- then they would have to be able to run very fast,” added the lizard demon. “Throwing themself on the mercy of the Dark Council- and the Dark Council doesn’t really do mercy- might be the only way to avoid being ripped to shreds by an angry mob.”  
  
“They’d have to resign from the Dark Council first, before they could do anything to them,” Crowley pointed out.  
  
“And they’d do it quickly if they had any sense,” the lizard demon retorted. “It’s been centuries since anyone last pushed too far. People are starting to itch for it.”  
  
“You can’t think that anyone would hold some kind of violent riot because of-” Aziraphale trailed off, not quite sure how to end that sentence.  
  
“It wouldn’t have to have anything to do with you,” said the frog demon with a snort.  
  
“Heaven got custody of Solomon’s soul, and that’s left us with the hatred of several thousand demons and nothing to point it at but proxies,” explained the lizard demon.  
  
“I mean, some of us would definitely riot over you,” Muhammad said. “I’m not sure you’ve noticed, Aziraphale, but people _like_ you.”  
  
“I-” He couldn’t actually process that statement, and so gave up on a reply after the first syllable.  
  
“Here’s the thirty pieces of silver question,” Crowley said after a moment. “Is Dagon trying to own you, or is this a horrible misunderstanding?”  
  
The room went deathly silent. Aziraphale realized that they were expecting him to speak, to answer the question.  
  
To decide, in effect, whether or not Dagon would live.  
  
More than any reassurance any of the others may have given him, that convinced him. He’d been a pawn in power struggles before, he’d been collateral, he’d even been something to sweeten the pot for a wager, but no one would have ever had him be the one to decide whether action would be taken, not so directly. No one would have given him that power, no matter what short-term gain they might get out of it. They wouldn’t have dared. It would set too risky a precedent. If slaves could decide the fates of their handlers- or anyone who might one day be their handler, even- then the whole system would very quickly come crashing down.  
  
Which still left the question of what would become of Dagon.  
  
Aziraphale was no stranger to knowing any number of dark and dirty secrets about his handlers- things which might cause his handlers harm, were they to come to light. Everyone in Heaven knew him: he was familiar as an object of contempt, and as an object in general. Familiarity and contempt had bred a kind of laxity, and people showed him things they would never dream of sharing with anyone who had a soul deemed worthy of the term. Oftentimes they didn’t even recall he was in the room with them, until he made some kind of noise or movement and gave himself away.  
  
That made it easy to decide. He knew what such secrets felt like, and no part of his interactions with Dagon carried that kind of weight.  
  
“No,” he said. “No, they probably thought I knew. I mean- they haven’t done anything to suggest that they felt any kind of claim over me.” They’d barely done anything with him at all, let alone _to_ him. They gave him his work assignments, and told him he’d done a good job on the last one, and that was it. That was the sum total of their interactions, every week, as regular as clockwork.  
  
The lizard demon looked down at him for a long moment, more than long enough for Aziraphale to contemplate exactly how fucked he would be if he’d gotten it wrong, if this was a test and he’d failed.  
  
Then the frog demon snorted again and said “Ligur.”  
  
Ligur turned to him, and helpfully replied “Hastur?”  
  
At least now Aziraphale knew their names.  
  
“We should go have a word with them,” Hastur said, jerking his head back towards the door. “This should never have happened.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s not like Dagon to be this sloppy,” Ligur said. “Will you be alright here?”  
  
Aziraphale cleared his throat so he could speak. “Yes, I’ll be fine.”  
  
“And I’ll stay for a bit,” Crowley added.  
  
Neither of the humans said anything, but neither did they move when Hastur and Ligur left.  
  
“How are you doing, Aziraphale?” Crowley asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” Aziraphale replied. “I- I don’t know.”  
  
He should feel something, shouldn’t he? Joy, exhilaration, and jubilation, or suspicion, distrust, and wariness… even head-spinning bewilderment at this sudden revelation. But, instead, he felt nothing at all, almost like he was puppeting his body once more, only this time, there wasn’t anything particularly terrifying threatening him.  
  
It was all just a bit much.  
  
“Do you believe us?” Muhammad asked.  
  
“I don’t disbelieve you,” Aziraphale said. “I just- it doesn’t feel real.”  
  
“That’s not uncommon,” Crowley said, at the same time as Avital said “You’ll probably feel that way for a while.”  
  
For a moment Crowley and Avital merely looked at one another.  
  
“I was captured as a girl when Nodab fell to the Assyrians. I was sold along until I ended up in Greece. I died in Delphi, after purchasing freedom for myself and my daughters,” Avital said.  
  
“Solomon summoned and bound me. I was his for a good twenty five years or so, and then I escaped,” Crowley said. “I told that boss what was happening, he sent Ligur and I to deal with it, and that’s how we got to here, more or less.”  
  
“ _Oh,_ ” Aziraphale said, feeling the blood drain from his face. He’d known that Solomon had enslaved demons, of course he had, everyone knew that, it was why Heaven had started enslaving them before they could become demons… and never once had he thought that Crowley might have been one of them.  
  
Muhammad shifted a little uncomfortably next to him. “I’m beginning to think that maybe I should have let Rotem stay instead,” he said.  
  
Crowley shot him a tiny little smile, before turning their attention back to Aziraphale. “You’ll be alright, Aziraphale. I promise. I know it must seem impossible now, but it’s true, and it’ll still be true when you’re ready to believe it.”  
  
Bereft of anything to say, Aziraphale merely nodded.  
  
“Do you sleep?” Crowley asked.  
  
Aziraphale blinked, taken aback by the sudden change in topic. “Erm. I have slept?”  
  
Crowley nodded. “Big fan of it myself,” they said. “I slept through most of the 14th century- not nearly enough of the century, if you ask me. After Solomon... well, it took awhile for the dust to settle but once it did I found myself a nice rocky outcropping in the Nabatene that got plenty of sun and took a nap for the better part of the decade.”  
  
“I used to sleep through my rest years,” Aziraphale said. The two human souls were giving him inquisitive looks, so he added “In Heaven, slavery comes with cycles. You spend forty-nine years with a handler, and then you’re given a year off- a rest year.”  
  
“A Jubilee,” Avital said softly.  
  
“That was where they got the idea, I believe,” Aziraphale said. “Your contract comes up for auction at the end of that, and then you’re shuffled off to whoever won you. I used to spend that time sleeping. There wasn’t really much else for me to do.”  
  
“You might want to consider sleeping for a bit down here,” Crowley advised. “It always helps me reset things a bit. It might help you too.”  
  
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly-” Aziraphale protested, but Crowley was already waving him off.  
  
“I don’t mean for a decade, or even a year,” they said. “But a night or two, here or there. Just to see.”  
  
“I’ll consider it,” Aziraphale said. “But not- I think I’d like to change my clothes, now.”  
  
“That’s our cue to leave,” Avital said, reaching behind him to poke Muhammad in the shoulder.  
  
They stood. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Aziraphale,” Muhammad said. “Unless you’re sleeping in tomorrow?”  
  
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Aziraphale told him firmly.  
  
Crowley made to follow the humans out, but hesitated on the threshold. “It wasn’t me, was it?”  
  
“Wasn’t-?”  
  
“Why they enslaved you. It wasn’t because they found out that we weren’t exactly killing one another all the time, was it?” they asked.  
  
“No,” Aziraphale assured them. “No, it was the sword. Entirely my own fault.”  
  
“It’s really not,” Crowley said. “It’s really, really not your fault at all.”  
  
And with that they left him on his own, alone with far too much to think about.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all: I'm sorry for writing so much about what is essential an OC. It's mostly relevant to the plot, I swear.
> 
> And now for some chapter-specific warnings: this covers a fair bit about the Bar Kokhba Revolt. If you’ve skimmed the wiki page on that before this, you know what’s coming, if you haven’t, then you might want to check that if you feel like historical travesties could trigger you. Most of the rest of this chapter is spent in Heaven. Nothing is particularly graphically described, but also almost nothing good happens there. Another potentially triggering event involves self-discorporation. Mentally, it’s not suicide so much as an attempt at a prison break, but it’s close enough in form that I feel I should put a suicide warning up here too. There’s also some talk of harm to children, specifically in the Flood (and potentially in their afterlife). Again, nothing graphic, but still potentially upsetting.
> 
> We'll be back to the Aziraphale and Crowley awkwardly reconnect saga next chapter!

The last time Gadri saw Zira was a few days before he Fell, the day the last rest year they spent together ended. The Power that came to wake them was one of the better ones: the chipper way she explained where they belonged for the next forty-nine years made Gadri want to scream and throw something, but she didn’t touch them, or say anything unnecessarily creepy.  
  
Gadri was on a public use rotation, and his first posting was going to be in one of the pillories that now littered Heaven, as he expected; Zira’s contract had been purchased by Sandalphon, which was maybe the only thing that was worse.  
  
“Well,” Zira said, with false, fragile brightness. “I shall see you in forty-nine years, then.”  
  
“Zira,” Gadri said softly, reaching out to touch him lightly on the arm.  
  
They’d spent the last year curled around one another, Gadri’s back to Zira’s front, hands intertwined, alternately sleeping and drawing whatever solace they could from one another when the dreams grew so bad that a return to reality became preferable. They had nothing to fear from each other.  
  
Zira flinched at the unexpected touch anyway.  
  
Gadri replayed that moment over and over again as he was set up in his allotted pillory: the flinch, the desperate, hand-wringing apology that had followed, the too-careful hug they had given one another before parting. Barely anything else registered. There was no humiliation at being paraded around Heaven naked, no fear at being locked in, hardly any pain from the angels making use of him. He was too used to it all: but that flinch? That was new.  
  
_Why are You letting this happen?_ he managed to think, eventually. There was no way to tell time while in a pillory, but he didn’t think he’d been there more than a week. _How could You let this happen, how could You let them hurt us, how could You-_  
  
At first, his main regret about Falling was the he hadn’t managed to take the dick of the angel raping him with him. That lasted until, so indeterminable time later, once he’d licked his wounds, gotten used to have retractable claws at the ends of his fingers and toes, and wrapped his head around the fact that Hell didn’t have a worse system of slavery, but _no_ system of slavery, but some kind of weird _no, slavery is horrifying and we wouldn’t do that to the worst of us_ system, he’d run into Kokab.  
  
The minute he’d looked at her smiling face, her eyes now flame bright, he remembered: Zira was still in Heaven, and Zira was now alone.  
  


* * *

  
  
Upon his creation, Gadri had been given the name Gadreel. It meant _wall of God_.  
  
“For you will be a bulwark, and a source of safety and shelter.” It was the first and last thing She ever said directly to him.  
  
It suited him, for a time. He walked the perimeter for the Watchers during the War, and there he learned to kill quickly, efficiently. Mercifully, you might say, if you’d never actually seen death. After the War, he built the wall around the Garden of Eden. After _that_ had gone sideways he and the rest of the Watchers followed Adam and Eve out of the Dudael and settled in to watch over them and their descendents.  
  
Watching very quickly turned to loving. They were angels, after all. They were made to love.  
  
He built different walls then: ones made of mud and straw, plastered with clay that dried into a tempting canvass. Az had already begun to experiment with paints for the body. It didn’t take much for Gadri to start tinkering with his recipes, and find out what would stick to the walls even when the monsoon came upon them. He built brightly-painted houses for his spouses and their children; built walls for the garden and the livestock; helped raise a great hall for all of them to gather in and celebrate weddings and the coming of new children and such.  
  
Humans were living longer then; seven, eight, and even nine hundred years, easily, without the care of angelic miracles. As Gadri and the others dispense their miracles liberally, Azrael never came to visit them.  
  
And then Azrael visited them all at once.  
  


* * *

Gadri was given a posting on Earth after a little more than a century in Hell. That was unusual, but so was previous Earthly experience and a large network of support. Kokab had been mentoring him, and then she’d spoken for him, and then she took him back to Earth.  
  
There were too many people, who were too loud, and spoke in too many tongues. They were all strangers to him, and he felt stranger for it.  
  
Everything had changed.  
  
“What in the name of Satan is a Sramana and why do people keep asking if I am one?” Gadri asked.  
  
“The humans have this idea about classifying one another by physical characteristics. It makes it easier for them to have wars, I think,” Kokab said. “To them, you look like you’re from India- that big sticky-outtie piece of land with the tall mountains over the ocean to the southwest of us- which is where the Sramanas are from. They’re missionaries, their sect is all about peace love and vegetarianism, and people are curious about them. Do _not_ tell anyone you’re a Sramana. They’re from an entirely different pantheon, and we do not- and this is important- we do _not_ fuck around with the dharmic religions. They have a lot of gods and goddesses and more spirits than I know the names for, and more power than I care to speculate about. No one knows for sure because they won’t talk to us, but as far as anyone can tell they are the reason the Flood never made it very far east of here.”  
  
“Oh,” said Gadri.  
  
“Hell’s official position is a very emphatic do not engage. Unofficially, we’re waiting for Heaven to piss them off, and hoping that results in them destroying Heaven for us.”  
  
“Ah,” said Gadri.  
  
“You’ll have to tell people you’re some kind of person from somewhere, though. They’ll get suspicious otherwise,” Kokab told him. She lapsed into thoughtful silence. “Muziris.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Muziris. It’s a port city in India- I think the country it’s in is called Chera Nadu? Something like that- it does a lot of trade with the Roman Empire. There’s been a small Jewish community there since shortly after Babylonian exile, and a larger one fled there after the destruction of the Second Temple. We’ll say you’re one of those, that way we’re only fucking with our own Creator. No need to piss anyone else off.”  
  
“Muziris.” Gadri nodded. He could remember that. “And where are you from, as far as the humans are concerned?”  
  
“Axum. It’s the heart of a trading empire situated to the south of the Aegyptus province of the Roman Empire, and also has a decently-sized Jewish community.” She paused, and then said “It’s also right around where we used to live.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Kokab Fell a couple centuries before Gadri, during a punishment every angel in Heaven had been obliged to watch. It wasn’t her punishment alone, of course: she was being punished along with Pene and Zira.  
  
They were given a chance to speak before the sentence was enacted. Kokab glowered, looking like she might spit. Pene had trembled and cried. Zira had stepped forward and tried to mount a defense, terrified though he obviously was. They let him talk for a while, longer than they usually let Zira talk about anything, long enough that even Gadri began to think that they had some chance of being granted a reprieve.  
  
“Start in with him first,” Gabriel said, when Zira had finished speaking.  
  
They started in with Zira first, but Pene, always the most delicate of them all, discorporated first. The Archangels had clearly been planning on it. Two of Raphael’s technicians bundled the empty, battered corporation up and left. Pene was brought back maybe an hour later, reincorporated, and pleading for mercy they had to know wouldn’t come.  
  
They started in with Zira first, and Pene was discorporated first, but Kokab had been the first of them to Fall. Not that they were telling anyone that she had, at first. She just stopped being brought back. Then Pene stopped being brought back.  
  
Zira was discorporated five more times after that before they called a halt to things. It wasn’t that they were done punishing him, but having the whole Host caught up in watching it at once was hurting their productivity, and there was little in Creation that was more abhorrent to Heaven than hurt productivity.  
  
“I’m relinquishing my claim on the slave Aziraphale’s time,” Michael announced. “And thus he’ll spend the rest of this cycle in public use.”  
  
Gadri caught sight of him a few times over the next couple of decades. They seemed to be shuffling him between all the worst pillories in Heaven: the mess hall, where just about everyone was at least once a day; the entrance hall, where people would come back from Earth with a bunch of ideas they’d gotten from the humans and several artifacts from their travels they could use; the martial training field, where angels would be all hopped up and often bruised-egoed and sometimes even armed; and the out-of-the-way pillory set up in an angel-only access tunnel on the far side of the human portion of Heaven, where absolutely no one went unless they wanted to try something away from the prying eyes of the Host. The fact that they _knew_ where the worst of the pillories were infuriated Gadri for reasons he couldn’t even begin to articulate.  
  
They aren’t able to speak again until their rest year, when Gadri was first relieved to find Zira attempting to do pushups in one of the courtyards, and then concerned: he could only really said to be _attempting_ pushups because there was something wrong with his left arm. It was… weirdly small. Withered, almost.  
  
“Hello, Zira,” he said.  
  
“Gadri,” Zira replied tightly. Then he sighed, and pushed himself upright. His left arm wasn’t moving right either. It jerked and locked into place seemingly at random. “It’s good to see you,” he said, more gently.  
  
“Yeah,” Gadri said, before blurting out “That was a decent thing, that you tried to do. Warning people when they were on the audit list. It’s not-”  
  
“Don’t,” Aziraphale said. “Please, I- I can’t discuss it. Please.”  
  
“Okay,” Gadri replied. “Okay.”  
  
They sat in silence for a moment.  
  
“I don’t suppose you have any ideas?” Zira asked.  
  
“About?”  
  
“My arm,” Zira said. “I can’t help but feel that if I can’t get it up to snuff then I’ll be in terrible trouble come the end of the year.”  
  
Someone in charge clearly agreed with him, because it wasn’t long before Zira was hauled off to an appointment with Raphael. A course of treatment was devised, something that took a few hours, once a week, for seven weeks. By the end of it Zira’s left arm looked exactly as it used to.  
  
Gadri would have expected that Zira wouldn’t want to talk about _that_ either, and he was mostly right. But Zira did say something, at one point: “I’m not sure why Raphael is so insistent that I be more grateful to her than ever before. She’s only fixing the damage she did.”

* * *

Heaven wanted the Roman Empire to expand, so it was their job, as agents of Hell, to ensure that it did not. There were multiple agents on multiple fronts working on this: theirs was in Judea, formerly Israel, now a province of Rome.  
  
It was very, very simple to start a war. There were plenty of grievances to go around. Their capital city had been razed and was being rebuilt to the invaders’ specifications, including replacing their Temple with one to Jupiter, plowing up the ancient foundations of the former in the process. Pressure was being put upon people to give up the semi-nomadic herding they’d been doing for generations and invest in sharecropping schemes which might bring some kind of economic stability, but definitely placed more people under direct Roman control. An entire extra legion had been garrisoned in what had once been Jerusalem but was now, by imperial decree, Aelia Capitolina. The presence of more soldiers was not appreciated.  
  
Kokab shifted her form into a more masculine shape and aged it into withered old age- a costume, one she shifted back out of whenever the two of them were on their own for a time. A necessity, she said, as people took men more seriously. They went hunting for a leader for this rebellion.  
  
It was also simple to find leaders, in Simon ben Cosibah, in Akiva ben Yosef, and in Eleazar of Modi’im. They bided their time, planning carefully. This would be- depending on how you counted the uprisings under Trajan, which had been done by Jews mainly not living in Judea- either the second or third revolt in a century’s time. Their chosen humans didn’t find that to be a deterrent. It meant that they had some idea what problems might arise, and how they were going to avoid them.  
  
They built up their supplies, and their lines of communication, and a large network of caverns to fight from and shelter civilians in. They waited until the Emperor, tempting target though he was, had taken his tour of the Eastern provinces and left. _Then_ they struck.  
  
Things went in their favor, for a time. They cut the Romans off from their supply lines before beginning their siege of the city they still called Jerusalem, and they took control of a large portion of Judea. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers answered the call to fight: some were sent by other Hellish agents at Kokab’s request, as reinforcements from the diaspora were what she and Gadri had promised this rebellion, but most came of their own accord, because they saw a chance for a nation of their own, free of Roman control, and they believed in that cause.  
  
For a moment, it looked like it was going to work. Coins were minted, laws argued upon, and contracts signed under the seal of an independent state. They called it the freedom of Jerusalem, for all that the city was still under siege, and they called it the redemption of Israel, for all that they were still fighting for independence. Simon took the title of Nasi upon himself. Akiva did him one better, and called him the Messiah.  
  
People started to call him Bar Kokhba after that- son of the star, the star that was meant to come out of Jacob and lead them into the Messianic age.  
  
“And I’m sure you had nothing to do with that,” Gadri teased Kokab. Her name also meant star- and was what the Aramaic word ‘kokhba’ was derived from.  
  
“Shut up,” she said, rolling her eyes, and nearly shoved him off the path and down the side of the mountain.  
  
Naturally, that was when things started to go wrong.  
  


* * *

  
  
Five hundred years after the advent of slavery in Heaven, Gabriel appeared before the Host and announced some ‘exciting changes’ to the system.  
  
There was to be a second audit, for one thing: and there would be more coming after that, at intervals Gabriel refused to specify. More slaves would be made- more defective angels would be identified, was how they put it- and more angels would be allowed to purchase their time. There was also going to be an alteration to the cycle-schedule. Now, instead of every slave being on the same forty-nine years on, one year off cycle, it would be staggered out, in five groups spaced a decade apart, so that Heaven would never be without slaves to labor for it.  
  
The announcement came near the end of their rest year, and it didn’t take long for everyone to work out the implications. For one thing, it meant that they would be sharing this space, their barracks, the one place they didn’t have to worry about the rest of the Host, with others: others who very well might have become their tormentors over the last five centuries. For another, more important, thing, they were going to be separated.  
  
Every non-Watcher angel caught in the Great Audit had Fallen by that point, save for Zira. None of the Watchers had, save for Uzza and Az, though at the time all any of them knew was that they had been given to Solomon shortly before the human’s death. That made one hundred and ninety-nine of them, sitting around, trying to absorb that knowledge.  
  
“We can’t let this happen,” said Pene. “We _can’t_.”  
  
“No,” Gadri agreed. “We can’t.”  
  
So, they didn’t. They tried to come up with a plan as a group, which at first was just Asbee, Kasady, Yeq, Pene, and Gadri, and slowly became everyone. It had to become everyone, because they weren’t leaving anyone alone to suffer in all of this. It wouldn’t be right.  
  
The question of how to get out of the barracks was answered surprisingly easily, once they overcame their squeamishness. If they discorporated themselves, they would be sent back to the entrance hall of Heaven, which was also the main exit of Heaven.  
  
“But we won’t have our bodies,” Kokab kept pointing out. “What are we going to do without bodies?”  
  
It was Zira who, after a great deal of staring into a nearby fountain as though it had personally insulted him, came up with the solution. “Do you think demons gain abilities from their Fall?”  
  
“What?” Asbee asked.  
  
“Would Falling confer new abilities, do you think?” Zira pressed.  
  
“No, what kind of a question is that?” Asbee retorted.  
  
“I’m asking because discorporate demons can possess people,” Zira explained.  
  
The barracks was silent for a moment.  
  
“We can’t just take someone over!” Kasady spluttered.  
  
“I’m not suggesting that we do,” Zira said. “But, I think we could probably ask if someone wouldn’t mind sharing their body, just for a bit.”  
  
“Who would agree?” Gadri asked.  
  
“Another slave,” said Kokab, and all eyes turned back to her. “We’d still have our powers, right?”  
  
“Demons certainly keep theirs,” Zira told them.  
  
Gadri kept forgetting, until it crept back up on him, that while he and the other Watchers had settled down and started families, Zira had been travelling the world, fighting demons and their wiles wherever Heaven sent him.  
  
“So, we find some human slaves. We promise them that in return for being allowed into their bodies, we free them and their families and friends, and we make sure they get away clean. And then...”  
  
“Then?” Gadri asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” Kokab admitted. “But we’ll be in bodies and out of Heaven by that point, so we hash out the details then.”  
  
“We don’t override people in their own bodies,” Yeq said firmly. “Just- as a ground rule. We can share if given permission, but ultimately those bodies aren’t ours and we don’t get to override what their owners want, yeah?”  
  
There was a general murmur of agreement, and that was that. They went about discoporating themselves immediately. The minute his body’s neck snapped he was up and away to Heaven’s entrance hall, where he was greeted by the sight of Michael and a myriad of her best, all armed, armored, and spoiling for a fight.  
  
They didn’t get it. None of them had thought that any of the angels would listen in on them in the barracks, and none of them had prepared to try to fight their way out. They surrendered, and were marched into Raguel’s new training hall for disobedient slaves.  
  
“I’ve been meaning to try out some of these methods for decades,” he informed them. “Thank you all for volunteering.”  
  
That hall was designed to break people, and it worked. People broke, and were shuffled to one of the new public use pillories until the next rest year arrived, and then were shuffled into that cycle’s grouping, or they broke and Fell. For that first trial run of the slave training hall, one was as likely as the other.  
  
For a long time, Gadri thought that Zira had been among the Fallen. But then, towards the end of his first full post-Raguel cycle, he caught sight of him in the pillory set up outside the Metatron’s office.  
  
A few years later and the cycle ended, resetting with another rest year. Zira went into the barracks with the rest of them, looking a bit dazed.  
  
Gadri immediately swept him up into a hug. “You’re here! Thank-” the word _God_ got caught in his throat. “You’re alright.”  
  
“I’m here,” Zira agreed quietly.  
  
They clung to one another, and were soon joined by Rathi, Jeja, and Mered, and only Rathi, Jeja, and Mered. No other Watcher had remained in a state of Grace and also been placed in this cycle. It was just them.  
  


* * *

  
  
The cracks began to show almost as soon as Simon took power. That was when Gadri learned that there was more than one type of Jew in the land of Israel.  
  
There were the Perisayya, which was the sect Simon and many of his followers belonged to: the people most involved with Jewish law and Jewish liturgy and Jewish literature and Jewish culture as a whole: they argued about it, commented upon it, perpetuated it and created it.  
  
To the exclusion of all else, said the Seduqim, who made up a lot of upper class members of Roman Jewish society. They didn’t bury their heads in the sand, they argued, but rather studied the laws and philosophies of others, so that they might better themselves, and better carve out a place for their people in a world that wasn’t under their power.  
  
You’re both corrupt, was the position of the Isiyim. But they were the smallest group, and they lived on their own in communes that pointedly kept no guards, and more than half of them were sworn celibates. Their criticism didn’t really sting like the Isiyim wanted it to.  
  
And then there were the Jesus people, who protested that they weren’t really Jews anymore as their Messiah had come and gone already (and, briefly, come back and then gone again), and also that he was their Messiah too, did they perhaps have a moment to hear the good news in greater detail? No establishment, either Jewish or Roman, paid much attention to their protests.  
  
Simon, in a turn of events Gadri was beginning to see was pretty predictable, didn’t much care for Jews who wouldn’t follow him, especially those from other sects. Examples were made, penalties were dealt out, lands were seized... it was a shame, really. The other sects had some good points. The Seduqim might be sat firmly upon Aristotle’s dick but they were also very for free will. The Isiyim were sanctimonious and insular, but they were also the staunchest opponents to slavery around. The Jesus people could be insufferable, but they could also be startlingly kind, and they were no friends of the Roman Empire. Gadri couldn’t help but feel like they could have been allies of Bar Kokhba if only he would try.  
  
He didn’t try. He was building a nation, a place with a common culture, not a coalition- and all the while Rome poured reinforcements into what they still called the Province of Judea.  
  
“We’re supposed to keep the Romans from expanding, at all costs,” Kokab said. “Do you think Heaven would flinch at installing a tyrant to further their aims?”  
  
“We both know they haven’t,” Gadri pointed out. Heaven didn’t flinch at much these days. “But shouldn’t we be better? Different, at least?”  
  
“We are,” Kokab said. “Simon’s got a cult following. That’s powerful, and we can’t cut that off just yet. But if he can turn this around, drive back the Romans and keep some measure of stability… then he can be replaced, one way or another. I’m thinking we give Yeshua ben Galgula a try next.”  
  
Gadri considered that for a moment. “That’s not a bad choice,” he allowed. “The soldiers love him. His mother’s a force to be reckoned with- if he listened to her on matters of finance and trade she could probably whip this place into a mercantile state like your Axum.”  
  
Kokab wrinkled her face further. “Have you even met Babatha?”  
  
“At this point, I feel like we’ve all met Babatha on some spiritual level that transcends things like having physically met the woman,” Gadri said. She kept in touch with her son. Her letters, which always contained blow-by-blow accounts of her many, many ongoing business deals, palm date experiments, lawsuits, and search for a suitable daughter-in-law were infamous.  
  
“Eh. Fair,” Kokab allowed.  
  
“I guess his name would appeal to the Jesus people too,” Gadri added. “His stepmother is even named Miriam.”  
  
“They’re practically twins,” Kokab deadpanned.  
  
Things looked bleak then, in Betar under siege, but they hadn’t thought they would lose until a few minutes later, when the messenger came to tell them that Simon bar Kokhba had killed Eleazar of Modi’im.

* * *

At first, the only angels allowed to own slaves were the Archangels. There were no public use cycles, and social mores were such that things like buying the same slave two cycles in a row or punishing them in public just weren’t done. Because there were significantly more slaves than Archangels, it was common to spend a cycle or two locked in the barracks, which was no worse than it had been for the previous two thousand years spent locked in the barracks. It still sucked.

Gadri remained in the barracks for the first two cycles, and was sold on the third to Sandalphon. That sucked a whole lot more.

He sat in one of the courtyards in the aftermath- in the rest year after- and sat on his hands in hopes of making them stop shaking. The others asked him questions, but he couldn’t make himself answer them.

Eventually Zira simply sat himself down on the same bench as Gadri, and waited for Gadri to turn to face him.

“You don’t need to talk,” Zira told him softly. “You can just nod or shake your head as you deem appropriate, if that’s all right with you.”

Gadri jerked his head up and down.

“Thank you,” Zira said. “Now, the others are concerned that Sandalphon might have taken your voice away from you. I think you’ve just had forty-nine years worth of extremely nasty shocks, and need more than a moment to compose yourself. Am I right?”

Gadri jerked his head up and down again. Zira might have been understating, but he wasn’t wrong either.

“Good,” Zira said. “Good.”

They sat there in silence for a moment before Zira piped up again with “I can leave if you’d rather be alone.”

Gadri’s hand shot out from under him and grabbed Zira by the wrist. Zira started, and then deliberately relaxed.

“Very well then. I’ll stay.”

So the two of them sat there in silence for a time. Zira would often start to fidget, catch himself, and then stop with a flush. Eventually, Gadri felt like he wasn’t in danger of shaking himself into discorporation. Before the rest year was finished, Gadri could even speak more or less normally again.

Of course, by the end of the rest year the first modification to the slave system had been announced: the Archangels would be allowed to purchase more than one slave at a time. Gadri and Zira ended up having the same handler, Gabriel.

Gabriel would never admit it, never even tolerate the idea in his vicinity, but that didn’t change the fact that he was vain. He liked power, and loved the display of it, especially when it was his own power. And so, he enjoyed showing his power by casually offering the use of his slaves to one of the lesser angels forbidden from buying their own.

That wasn’t the only source of inspiration for the public use cycles- Raphael liked to think of herself as a cool boss, sharing with her underlings; Sandalphon was fond of public punishments- but it was a pretty major source nevertheless. And Gadri had to watch as the thin layer of propriety that vaguely protected them was worn away until refusing to partake in public became itself impolite- and impolitic.

* * *

It had been an accident, more or less. There had been an argument, charges of treason having been brought to Simon against Eleazar by some third party. Simon had lost his temper and struck the other man. Weakened by old age and fasting, he had fallen hard, and then died.

“What third party?” Kokab asked.

“What?” Simon asked. He was staring at the floor, presumably at the place where Eleazar had fallen.

“You said someone had come to you with accusations of treason,” Kokab reminded him gently. “Who were they?”

“A Samaritan,” Simon said, after a bit of a think.

Gadri for the life of him could not figure out what the Samaritans’ deal was. Were they just Jews from Samaria? Were they their own separate religion? Were they a distinct sect of Judaism with atypical beliefs about mountains? He had asked more than a few people to try to explain it, mainstream Jewish, Samaritan, and even a few of the Jesus people who could spare him a moment. Impossibly, he’d gotten a greater number of answers than people he’d canvassed for them.

One thing he was sure of though: a bad thing happened, and a Samaritan prompted it was a very familiar story to tell in Judea. That was one of the reasons why the Jesus people loved that parable of their Messiah’s so much- a good Samaritan was a plot twist.

Another thing he was sure of: no matter how you defined it, or what the differences were, there were a lot of Samaritans in Bar Kokhba’s camp.

“Enough that if fighting were to break out, we wouldn’t need to wait for the Romans to break through the walls,” Kokab said.

“Yeah, yep, that’s, yeah,” Gadri said, peering down at the group of Samaritan volunteers gathered around a small fire. They were all very young, and seemed to be playing some kind of game where they dared one another to cut off one of their fingers.

“Did you even hear what I said?” Kokab demanded.

“Did Bar Kokhba seem okay to you?” Gadri asked.

“Did it seem like he should seem okay?” Kokab asked.

“Did him seem like he’d been overfluenced?” Gadri asked bluntly, which brought Kokab up short.

Back when they’d been new to parenthood- back when they’d been parents, fuck, he missed his-

No, no. There was no time for that now.

They hadn’t known how to handle kids. They’d never even been kids themselves, really. So, sometimes, early on, when their toddlers acted as toddlers were wont to do, they’d tried to nudge a little bit of angelic influence into them, to make them into better behaved beings. The unfocused, quiet, almost absent way they went around for days afterwards had ensured that none of them ever did it more than once, and many of them never did it at all.

 _Overfluencing_ , they’d called it.

“Heaven doesn’t flinch at much,” Kokab said, which was all she needed to say, really.

“You’ll keep our humans from killing one another,” Gadri said. It wasn’t a question, much less an order: many had decided that Kokab was a sage of some kind, and she’d accepted that the same way she’d accepted male pronouns and people continually giving up their seat for her while under the impression that she was elderly and could keel over and die any second. If anyone could salvage this, it would be her.

“Go,” Kokab said.

That _was_ an order, so Gadri went to ask those Samaritan boys where the idea for their finger chopping tough talk had come from.

* * *

  
They sat together in the aftermath of the enslavement, pressed together for comfort. They did that fairly often, but generally it was just the Watchers (give or take a Zira). Generally they kept it to groups of four or five. Generally no one was actually crying.

Many people were crying now, and they were all together, Watchers and non-Watchers alike. Gadri ended up with Zira weeping uncontrollably into his shoulder, Asbee on his other side, and Beza behind Zira, rubbing his back soothingly.

“I’m so sorry, Zira,” she was saying as she rubbed. “I’m so sorry.”

Gadri found he couldn’t say much of anything at all at the moment. Every time he did, he was reminded of the tether embedded into the fabric of his celestial being. It felt like a noose around his neck.

Everyone experienced the tether differently. Asbee felt like part of his being had been twisted, providing something for the Archangels to clip a lead into. Beza felt like she’d been encased with wires. Zira claimed that he felt almost nothing at all, unless he was actively being bound, or going beyond his boundaries- then it felt like a sudden, heavy weight on his chest that had been set on fire.

He sat there, with his arm around Zira, and missed Uzza. They’d always given the best hugs. But they were gone now, along with Az, given to King Solomon in thanks for the idea about what to do with them all.

They’d wanted to send Zira down, originally, but Uzza had stepped in, so they’d used Zira differently, as a demonstration of what being enslaved would entail.

“And you’ve never even had sex, have you?” Beza was saying.

“No,” Zira moaned. It was strange, hearing his voice again. They’d only given it back so they could hear him screaming and pleading. “No, not before-”

“It doesn’t count. That doesn’t count it’s not-” Beza looked over the top of Zira’s head at him, but Gadri still couldn’t make himself speak. “It’s not supposed to be like that.”

It wasn’t supposed to be a punishment. It hadn’t been a punishment, really: it wasn’t a matter of _if you don’t behave, this is what you’ll get_ , or _you fucked up so this is what will happen now_. It had been a very clear _this will happen to you whenever we want it to, and there’s no changing it_.

* * *

He followed the trail through the camp, the discord and despair and misguided aggression making it easy to follow. The Romans were at the gate, and a very obvious threat to everyone’s survival. So long as Eleazer’s death remained unannounced, anyone who had other concerns they felt they needed to act upon immediately was suspect. A few people were obviously overfluenced, but for most, the effect had been far subtler: simply the right words at the right time to bring all kinds of wrong bubbling to the surface.

Whoever this was, they knew their shit. And it wasn’t long before it became obvious that they knew he was onto them.

He felt it first: a slow, corroding shadow of power, with such malicious intent that some deep-set recess of his mind hissed _demon_.

Which was ridiculous. Gadri was a demon now, and the being he was hunting was an angel.

They revealed themselves on the wall of the city with the sun setting behind them, like the overly dramatic bitch they were. Like the overly dramatic bitch he was, he cleared the walls of people so they could glare at one another properly.

He made sure he got a good look at them before doing that, though- a real look at the real them, not just what the demons of Hell affectionately referred to as the meatsuit. They were a Principality- created, not demoted, there were none of the horrifying _wounds_ , for lack of a better word, that Zira and the other Guardians of Eden carried around with them- and therefore someone of at least moderate importance. Principalities were the highest-ranking angels assigned to Earth, and if they’d had half the sort of trouble on their assignments as Zira had had on his then they had to have become a very formidable opponent. He was going to have to be careful not to underestimate them, despite the gulf in their relative power levels.

“What is it you think you’re doing?” they asked.

“Protecting God’s chosen people,” Gadri said, before grinning. He knew exactly how he was going to play this now. “Why? What is it you think you’re doing, _demon_?” He let his wings unfurl as he spoke. They weren’t white any longer, but honestly? He kind of liked them better now, in all the different shades of gold that they were. In this light, they must have looked like they were made of flame.

The angel hadn’t expected that. Their wings, when they came out, were the Principality standard: white, fluffy, much smaller than his. To the humans, it would seem as though their wings were a pale imitation of his- like they were trying to copy him, but couldn’t quite get the details right.

Like they were the demon, in short.

To their credit, they very quickly realized this and took to the sky before anyone could get any ideas about helping into their heads. Gadri gave chase, giving the Roman encampment beneath them the finger as he did.

Smaller wings meant more maneuverability, unless he wanted to go full celestial form- which he didn’t, that was one of those things which Heaven and Hell had an agreement about, and woe betide whoever broke that agreement first. He wasn’t surprised when they darted down to dip between the valleys created by the buildings in the next town over. It was nearly deserted, its inhabitants either now behind the walls of Betar or scattered to the winds before the Romans could arrive. He had no compunctions about running after them on foot, over the rooftops.

When he heard the sound of a crash, followed by cursing, he grinned, and dropped down to street level. He’d intended to confront them, but was ambushed instead.

Zira had never had backup, in any of his stories. Yeq had asked him about it once, and he’d replied, sounding a bit startled by the question, that he hadn’t been given a command since Eden, and he honestly hadn’t expected to get another one until Armageddon arrived. Gadri didn’t fully appreciate the meaning of that conversation- that most Principalities did have angels under their command on Earth- until after he’d been discorporated and sent back to Hell.

“I need to get back up there,” Gadri nearly growled at the demon running the place.

“Everyone needs to ‘get back up there’, but you’ll find that without the correct paperwork authorizing an expedite you will not move any quicker than anyone else,” replied Clauneck.

Gadri did growl then, a sound that was closer to a lion’s roar than he’d intended.

Clauneck raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have to wait here,” she told him. “You’ll get notice when your number is up.”

“Fine!” Gadri shouted and then, for a lack of better options, stormed away.

* * *

At first, it wasn’t so bad. Of course, it only seemed like that with the benefit of hindsight. At the time being imprisoned had felt very, very bad indeed.

Gadri missed his home and he missed his family. That grief could be shared with the other Watchers, at least, though it didn’t quite ever lessen so much as they got used to the pain. The other angels kept their distance- save for Zira, of course- and time marched on for two thousand years.

They were interrupted only rarely, and only when Heaven wanted something from them. Generally, it was the sort of job that seemed like it could be _wrong_. Gadri supposed that they didn’t want to risk anyone Falling- or he had at the time. It became obvious later that they didn’t actually give a shit. While that left the question of why hanging there, he didn’t actually care very much about finding out the answer. It happened, and it sucked.

The Watchers were sent out most often. Gadri went out five times. He convinced a scared and abused woman to return to the people who hurt her. He directed slavers to a young man trapped by his brothers in an empty cistern. He helped to boil all Egypt save for the slave quarters of Goshen in shadows. He brought down the walls of a city and then watched as the city’s inhabitants were nearly all slaughtered. He brought down a tyrant, not because he was a bad ruler, but because it wasn’t time for Israel to have a king yet. He didn’t earn any punishments from doing that, so he supposed that he must have done well by someone’s standards, at least.

The others weren’t so lucky. Az, for example: she’d been tasked by Heaven with killing ( _murdering_ , she always insisted) the family of one of God’s faithful, in order to test him. When she’d refused, they had gathered them all up and made them watch as she was beaten so badly that it had taken almost a decade for her to relearn how to walk properly. Her corporation still held the scars.

It had been the worst any of them were hurt, though that wasn’t the punishment that had lasted the longest. The dubious distinction of earning that punishment fell on Zira.

The other, non-Watcher angels were sent down occasionally too, just not as often as the Watchers. Zira was lumped in with those other angels this time around: they sent him out twice. The first time they sent him out with another angel. The two of the returned, covered in ash and salt, several days later. Zira refused to speak of it. The other angel didn’t stop crying about it for three days. The second time he was sent out he went alone, and when he returned he _couldn’t_ speak at all.

“They took your voice?” Beza asked incredulously.

Zira nodded miserably.

“What the fuck?” Kokab asked. Her sentiment was echoed around the courtyard, and Zira shrank in upon himself until the muttering stopped.

“Well, good news: we’ve already come up with a sign language, and would be happy to teach it to you,” Uzza said.

It was true. Most of Asbee’s kids had been deaf, two of Beza’s and one of Mered’s were mute, and every so often they’d end up with a kid who just plain didn’t want to talk.

Gadri’s non-verbal child hadn’t wanted to make eye contact or eat anything with a bean in it either. She had liked snails, though. She could spend hours watching them, making notes about which plants they went after, what weather conditions were likely to bring them out in force, which had shells that could be used to make paint…

Fuck. Just, _fuck_.

It didn’t matter, how long it had been since his children had died. He never stopped being tripped up by it.

“Yeah. We’d be happy to teach you,” Gadri echoed.

Zira learned quickly. Zira, they were beginning to realize, loved anything that could be used to tell a story. And, honestly, it was kind of funny how much the other angels _hated_ not being able to understand what they were signing about.

So, yeah. In hindsight, it hadn’t been that bad at all.

* * *

  
By the time Gadri was reincorporated and cleared to go back up to Earth it was all over: the Bar Kokhba Revolt had ended in a resounding Roman victory. At Kokab’s request, he didn’t meet up with her, but rather went up to a place a little to the south and east of Judea. Two senior demons, Harut and Marut, had set up there, teaching their little magics and performing minor miracles under the guise of showmanship, tempting the humans with power and knowledge beyond what they might otherwise be able to have.

The Roman were here too, though they’d come peacefully- by Roman standards, at any rate. They’d spent some time as a vassal state before consenting to be integrated into the Empire as the province of Arabia Petraea. The Romans called this, the capital city carved out of beautiful rose-colored sandstone, Petra; to the Nabateans who had built this city, however, it remained Raqemo.

Kokab came in with a group of refugees, and after seeing them as safely situated as could be came to find him to give him all the details.

“Betar fell shortly after you left. Simon was killed. They were all killed. The Romans wanted to salt the Earth, so they did. Just razed entire towns and slaughtered or enslaved anyone they could get their hands on. They’re saying that they killed over half a million people.”

“And how many were enslaved?” Gadri asked.

“Many,” Kokab grunted.

They were silent for a moment.

“Did Beelzebub or Dagon send you up with a report?” Kokab asked.

Gadri reached into the pocket he was wearing on his tunic and pulled out the relevant scroll. “Here. Broad summary: we got Simon, a lot of the soldiers following him, a few miscellaneous others- including Yeshua’s mother, though I don’t know why, she’s sharp but not violent or malicious or anything-”

“But not very good at following the rules, then, is she? Not the ones that tell her to keep quiet and know her place. Heaven wouldn’t want that,” Kokab interrupted.

“Yeah, I guess not,” Gadri admitted.

“We didn’t get the sages,” Kokab noted as she read. “Not that that’s a surprise. The Romans martyred Akiva, you know? Tortured him to death with an iron comb- ripped him to shreds.”

“An iron comb?” Gadri asked. “Like, for sheep’s wool?”

Kokab nodded.

“Fuck.” He hoped no one passed that one up to Sandalphon.

Kokab was still reading, but he decided to spoil the end for her anyway. “We didn’t get most of the souls of the people who died. We didn’t get half of them- from the sound of things, we didn’t even get a fifth.”

“We got played,” Kokab told him flatly. “It happens.”

“Fuck,” Gadri said again.

Kokab didn’t respond, apparently intent on actually reading the scroll.

“Look,” she said, putting the thing aside at last. “The group I’m with is heading south, to Himyar. Let’s go there.”

“What’s in Himyar?” Gadri asked.

“I don’t know. Less pretty rocks and sand than up here. They do a brisk business in frankincense and myrrh, and a decent amount of trade with Axum and Muziris.”

“Jewish community?” he asked. He wondered how long it would be before they were blending in with the Jesus people instead. Probably not long- like those mysterious Sramanas he still hadn’t met, they seemed to be fond of missionaries.

“One of the women I’m travelling with has family down that way. A son who’s done well for himself, and should be able to see at least some of them to their feet again,” Kokab told him. “And, better yet, no Romans. Not to occupy the place at least. The Himyarites send regular embassies and gifts up to them, and maintain a large army for themselves, and Rome is leaving them be, for the time being. I’m going to make sure it stays that way. Are you coming with?”

“Well, I can’t leave on your own now, can I?” Gadri replied, and forced a smile.

* * *

They made them watch the Flood.

They were made to leave their corporations first, and then they were made to stand there, the eyes of their celestial forms unable to close simply because there had never before been a reason for them to do so, and watch the Flood as it swept away everything in its path.

The world wasn’t the whole world, of course, but it was Gadri’s world that sank beneath the waves, Gadri’s world which died drowning and crying out for the father and husband that had always been able to make things better for them before, and it was Gadri’s world that was being consigned to eternal torment for the crime of being his.

When the waters receded, the world he’d known and loved was utterly gone. Nothing remained of his family, or the village that had been a home to them all. Even the land it had been standing on was changed, eroded from the highest mountains into their foothills. Gadri was dully surprised that it was still there at all, and hadn’t simply vanished beneath the waves like Atlantis, Mu, and Lemuria. Then they took them out of the observatory before the chosen surviving family had even fully disembarked.

Probably because, as Gadri would later learn, things hadn’t gone quite according to plan. Heaven always acted like the _entire_ world hadn’t been meant to drown, but Hell was under the impression that it had been, and that plan had been foiled by the deities of other religions. Noah’s second wife, Waila, hadn’t boarded the Ark with them, but had stayed and drowned in protest. His son by her, Bith, had taken his daughter and as many people as he could persuade to follow him and sailed to the far north, hoping to outrun the flood. At the urging of a certain demon named Crawly, Ham had smuggled a good two dozen children onto the Ark, and then claimed them as his own. There had been other boats holding other survivors as well, other chosen ones of other religions- Deucalion, Ziusudra, Atrahasis, Utnapishtim. Oddly enough, no one in Heaven spoke a word about that either.

They were taken back to their bodies, and then back to the barracks that had been hastily modified to serve as their prison, and there they waited.

Right from the start, there was a clear division between the Watchers and the others. They tended to look down their noses at them, the other angel prisoners, as though their sins had been somehow better than theirs, than the sins of falling in love and having children. There was one exception to this: Zira.

Gadri caught him crying, a few days in- something he and the other Watchers had been doing, but no one else had been. It was a little surprising to him that any of them would feel the need, and he said as much.

“I don’t want to compare our situations,” Zira said. “I just- oh, goodness, you lost your family, I’m sure this all seems very silly to you, but-”

“But you lost people too,” Gadri realized.

“I had friends, of a kind,” Zira said. “It was- my latest assignment- my _last_ assignment- I was supposed to go to the city of Mari, and try to pry it from Dagon’s control. No easy task, the city was well-run, prosperous, not full of suffering like you would expect from a demon lord’s city. The blunt way wouldn’t work, not with so many people being so comfortable with how things were. So, without telling them who I was or why I was there, I made friends. The last thing I ever said to any of them was that I had to see to a bit of business elsewhere but would be back as soon as I could. And it just keeps hitting me, now, that there isn’t a Mari to return to, and none of my friends are there.”

“That sounds like a good reason to cry to me,” Gadri said.

“Thank you,” Zira said with a watery smile. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

* * *

They took a quick pit stop on their way to Zafar, to a city called Iram. Like Raqemo, it was a city of magnificently detailed cut-rock architecture, full of square pillars made to look as though they were made of small stones, which in turn seemed to have faces. Unlike Raqemo, there didn’t seem to be any rock to cut anything from: the buildings were all made from some kind of blueish-grey stone that seemed completely at odds with all the golden sands surrounding them.  
  
“Did they level the whole mountain for this or- I don’t even know what,” Gadri asked.  
  
“I think there was some sort of meteor strike,” Kokoab replied. “Created the desert, left behind a bunch of rock hunks for the humans to carve.”  
  
“Allat,” replied a woman from the next table over.  
  
“What?” Gadri asked.  
  
“Allat. She’s the goddess around these parts- this is her city. It’s made from some kind of large meteorite she apparently stopped from destroying everything when it landed. You can ask her about it, if you like.” Here the woman tucked her long, red hair under her veil, and let her glasses slide down her nose. Her eyes were yellow, and slit-pupiled, not unlike how Gadri’s could be if he wasn’t careful about keeping his human form in passably human form. “She’s around, probably in city hall if not the temple. I wouldn’t chance the temple, by the way. In theory it’s not consecrated against us, but I still wouldn’t chance it.”  
  
“Hello Crawly,” Kokab said, inclining her cup of raisin wine towards him. “Gadri, this is Crawly, the Serpent of Eden, Original Tempter, yada yada yada… and Crawly, this is Gadri, last of us Watchers to Fall.”  
  
“It’s Crowley, actually,” the woman-shaped demon corrected with a scoff. “I changed it. Like, over a hundred years ago!”  
  
“Well, nobody told me!” Kokab protested.  
  
Crowley had the bigger table and the better view, so they moved over to hers, and brought the raisin wine with them.  
  
“So, there’s an actual goddess walking around?” Gadri asked.  
  
“Yeah, and this one _will_ talk to us,” Kokab said.  
  
“I do not recommend talking with her,” Crowley said sternly.  
  
“Why?” Gadri asked, as Kokab muttered “Oh, here we go.”  
  
“Look, Allat is what she’s called here by the ‘Ad, but she’s not from here. She’s an immigrant from farther north- from what’s now Judea, actually.” Crowley spoke as though she had game-changing information to impart, and she was right. “Originally, she was called _Asherah_.”  
  
“Wait,” Gadri said slowly. “Isn’t that just-”  
  
“One of the effable names of God given to the humans? Yes. Yes it is,” Crowley told him. “But you know how humans have gotten about gender post-Flood, with the whole command to be fruitful and multiply and whatever.”  
  
Gadri had noticed a very weird and distinct gender dichotomy, and that the humans tended to call God _Father_ (which was about as accurate as the angels calling Her _Mother_ in the end) so he nodded.  
  
“They weren’t so great at multiple names either,” she continued. “They thought _Yahweh_ and _El_ were their own separate entities for a time.”  
  
“Asherah got shafted into being Yahweh’s wife, if I recall correctly,” Kokab added. “And then they got really into the whole One True God thing and started throwing out anything that might smack of worship of other gods, altars to Asherah and the poles she used to have in the Temple included.”  
  
“And that’s when Asherah herself started walking around,” Crowley finished.  
  
Gadri spent a moment trying to work out how any of that made sense before eventually giving up.  
  
“I’m sorry, are you saying that God split Herself up, or are you saying that the humans managed to think up a god, or- what are you saying?” he demanded.  
  
“I’m saying I don’t know what Asherah is, but I don’t recommend poking her with a stick,” Crowley told him.  
  
Kokab rolled her eyes. “Of course you shouldn’t poke her with a stick, that’s fucking rude.” After a beat, she added. “I have spoken with her though. I don’t think she’s God. There was a complete lack of smiting, for one thing.”  
  
“Oh that doesn’t mean much of anything,” Crowley said dismissively. “I yell at God all the time! And She must hear it, big omniscient thing of omniscience that She is. No smiting. No response either.”  
  
“And yet, you won’t talk to Asherah,” Kokab pointed out.  
  
Crowley was silent for a moment. “I’m not going to Her,” she said finally. “Not after everything She’s done. If She’s feeling like another session of Questions With Crowley after all this time, She can come to me.”  
  
“So what are you doing here?” Gadri asked.  
  
“I came to talk to you, actually,” Crowley said. “This was your first time back on Earth since the Flood, and your first assignment from Hell, and… it didn’t go well, from what I hear.”  
  
“Who’d you hear that from?” Kokab asked before Gadri could.  
  
“Kasady and his team,” Crowley replied. “They’re taking over my previous assignment in Garamantes, and asked me if I wouldn’t check in on you if we were to cross paths.” She shrugged. “So. How are you holding up?”  
  
“I… don’t know,” Gadri admitted. He hadn’t actually seen the destruction, the deaths, the any of it. He was still learning new details from the group of refugees they were travelling with. He’d just found out that, to add insult to injury, Jews were no longer allowed in Jerusalem, save for a single day’s pilgrimage for Tisha B’Av. “It all feels so unreal.”  
  
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Crowley said. “If it makes you feel better, it isn’t just you. _Everyone’s_ failing at this task. I failed with the Iceni, Ashtoreth and Namaah failed with the Batos… we could count the Lugii as a success, but as none of us were there when Arminius was swanning about it’s not really _our_ success. Hastur and Ligur are there now, so I guess they get whatever comes out of Germania next.” Crowley snorted. “It’s funny. I would have thought that after the whole annexing-Israel-crucifying-Jesus thing that Heaven would be all against Rome. I guess they like martyrs too much to actually help people.”  
  
“Was Jesus… you know,” Gadri trailed off. Somehow, despite Falling, he found that he couldn’t quite make himself ask. It felt blasphemous, the idea of God having a child, much less a human one.  
  
“The Son of God?” Crowley finished for him. “I don’t know. I asked him, once. He told me _So they say. Aren’t we all children of God?_ ” She sighed. “He could do miracles- but then again, so could Elijah and Daniel and many of the other holy men. His grave is empty, but it could have been robbed. I don’t think Miriam of Magdala was lying when she said that she saw him again, but grief does funny things to the mind.” She sighed again, tossed back her wine, and poured herself another cup. “I don’t know,” she finished.  
  
“Well, that makes two of us,” Gadri said.  
  
“Three,” Kokab pointed out.  
  
They drank.  
  
“So you’re off to the Sabaeans, then?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Himyarites,” Kokab corrected. “Their kingdom’s not under Roman control. Hopefully we can keep it that way. And you?”  
  
“I’m headed to Rome itself,” Crowley said. “My own fault, but I’m not looking forward to it.”  
  
“That explains the detour,” Kokab said dryly, before adding for Gadri’s benefit “Garamantes is all the way on the other side of Africa. Rome is between here and there.”  
  
“And a bit to the north,” Crowley pointed out.  
  
“You probably could have sailed directly there, saved yourself a few horse rides,” Kokab said.  
  
“Eurgh,” Crowley said, wrinkling her nose. “Don’t remind me.”  
  
“Well, I think people mostly use camels here,” Gadri remarked.  
  
“That’s not any better!” Crowley cried.  
  
“So what are you doing in Rome then?” Gadri asked. “Civil war? Slave uprising?”  
  
“If I can manage it,” Crowley said grimly. “I didn’t manage much last time I was in Rome- though in my defense, it was really hard to be in the same room as Caligulia without wanting to run for the nearest bathhouse. Rome does have plenty of public baths, though, so I guess I’ll just have to tough it out.”  
  
“Samael and Lilith are there, I think,” Kokab said. “You won’t be alone.”  
  
“Yeah, they were there last time too,” Crowley said. “Different social circles, but we would run into one another every so often. They took me out for oysters once. Have you ever eaten an oyster? I don’t recommend it. It’s not really bad taste, exactly, but the- the _mouth feel_.”  
  
“Do you mean texture?” Kokab asked.  
  
“Tell you what: you do eat an oyster, and tell me if texture is the right word for that,” Crowley spluttered.  
  
Both Kokab and Gadri laughed at her.  
  
“Seriously though,” Crowley said to him, once they’d calmed down. “Don’t worry about it. We try our best- but sometimes, that’s not enough.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Their trial was short, and not much of a trial. They had no chance to refute the charges against them, or to say a word in their own defense. The verdict had been decided. The punishment… weirdly, the punishment had not. At least, not in totality.  
  
“All of you have acted against God’s Plan, and all of you should Fall,” Michael said. “Quite frankly, we’re not sure why you haven’t. Until such time as we understand better what to do with you, you will be locked away, so that you might not corrupt others into sin.”  
  
_What sin?_ Gadri wanted to ask. The Watchers had fallen in love with humans and had had children with them. Most of the others hadn’t even done that much. One angel had spent too much time organizing people into the proper worship of God to the point where they started worshipping her as the One True Intermediary between themselves and God. Another had gotten too involved with their battles with the forces of Hell and forgot that they were supposed to be fighting by proxy. One poor bastard had just lost his sword.  
  
“As to those you have already corrupted on Earth, they will be purged,” Michael continued.  
  
“Do you mean our families?” Az asked, horrified.  
  
Sandalphon coughed discreetly. It sounded like a suppressed laugh.  
  
“If you mean the humans you laid with, and the abominations you got from them, then yes,” Michael said. “They’ll receive no quarter on Earth, and no shelter in Heaven.”  
  
“You’ll send them to Hell?” Az demanded.  
  
Michael inclined her head, once. It was more than enough.  
  
“You can’t-”  
  
“There are children-”  
  
“Mastema isn’t even ten yet-”  
  
“They didn’t do anything wrong-”  
  
“You have no right to-”  
  
“It has been decided,” Michael said icily, and that was the end of the trial.  
  
And it was a lie, from start to finish. His children weren’t in Hell, none of them were. They were half-celestial, they’d been raised to worship God as the angels did: if they weren’t in Hell, then there was only one other place they could be.  
  
Heaven.

* * *

The year 1556 of the Julian calendar found Gadri in Muziris at last.  
  
Not that it was called Muziris anymore. That town had been flooded out a few centuries earlier, and the town that had been built in its place was called Cranganore by the Portuguese who now ruled the area from Goa. No one confused him for a Sramana any more, because the Sramanas had largely split into Buddhists (he’d run into those in Bactria, before the Muslim conquest) or Jains (he’d run into a few of them when he’d been with the Mughals during the reign of Akbar). The dominant religion in the area was the one the Sramanas had splintered off from, and it was called Hinduism. As Kokab had promised, there were more deities than he could ever remember the names for, and none of them seemed eager to talk to him.  
  
He had talked to a few of their priests, though. They had some interesting things to say about what they thought was the reason everything on Earth seemed to be so terrifying all the time. For example, as far as the Hindus were concerned, they were in a time period called the Kali Yuga, when people would spread falsehoods, worship evil, and just generally behave badly. When Gadri asked for a date on that, and then worked out the calendar conversion, it turned out to have started in 3102 BC, roughly a century before the Flood.  
  
It felt important, though he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t his pantheon, there were no covenants to make or break there, and Kokab’s stern warning- _we do not fuck with the dharmic religions_ \- still held weight. It wasn’t like he could believe what that priest had been so careful not to say, that demons, angels, and even God Herself were just a symptom of a corrupt and belligerent time, which, as measured by the long timeframe of the Chatur Yuga, would soon pass. He’d been there when the world began, and he would likely be there when it ended, and it wasn’t like the priest had described at all.  
  
That said, he did wonder sometimes, if those other gods might have also been there at the Beginning, and if maybe they remembered it differently.  
  
There were still Jews- the nearest community was centered around the city of Cochin, to the south of here. There had been another great prophet after Jesus: Muhammad, the founder of Islam, whose Muslim worshippers ruled the gunpowder empires far to the north. The Jesus people were calling themselves Christians now, and Gadri pretended to be one of them whenever any of the colonial officials asked for his papers. It was the safest option, if still not quite safe. The Christians had brought a lot of things with them to their colonies in India. A few of them Gadri liked, such as the printing press the Jesuits had set up earlier that year. More of them he didn’t like at all, such as the Inquisition office that had been operating out of Goa for five years now.  
  
They were just such _dicks_ about everything. They went after the Hindus because they thought that the gods they worshipped were demons. There weren’t many Buddhists around, but that didn’t stop them from pillaging the holy artifacts they left behind and calling them Satanic. They went after the Jews, because as far as they were concerned the only point of Judaism was to be a prologue for Jesus. They went after the Muslims, even though they revered Jesus, because they revered him in the wrong way. They went after the Nasranis- the local branch of Christianity- for much the same reason. They went after anyone who didn’t speak Portuguese- especially anyone who spoke the local language, Konkani- and it often seemed to Gadri that they went after anyone who had skin darker than theirs, no matter how hard they tried to make themselves fit.  
  
Gadri told people he was a Christian because that made life easier for him, because that was what was safest, but that was as far as he would bend. His job here was to undermine the Inquisition, and he saw no reason why that shouldn’t involve being a properly stubborn example. He spoke Konkani whenever he could, and as far as anyone he worked closely with was concerned, he kept the Nasrani rites in private. He flitted in and out of the various Porotguese offices, finding information that they didn’t want any of the locals to know, sowing discord and doubt amongst the colonists, and occasionally turning one of them into a pink-bottomed macaque for a few hours just for the hell of it. He had to get his laughs in somewhere.  
  
Right now his main project was the printing press. He had, regretfully, put the idea of building one to print literature in Konkani to the side for the time being: he didn’t know what characters he would use to write it, but he knew he didn’t want it to be in any kind of Roman alphabet. But the Portuguese were using their version of the Roman alphabet, all the little blocks of letters would be in that alphabet, and there were so very many little blocks that Gadri was a bit intimidated by the prospect of having to make more from scratch. Maybe he could use that somehow? Print something in Dutch or English, make the Portuguese look for their European adversaries and maybe lay off the Indians, and maybe…  
  
There was a peel of laughing and joyous screaming from outside the window, and that was that end of that line of thought.  
  
He was having trouble focusing. It was monsoon season here. He’d missed monsoons. They reminded him of home. Right now, they made him predisposed towards homesickness with all their glory: the water clinging to the air, the forgiving grey cast to sky, the scent of wet earth, the sounds of children playing in the puddles in the times between storms. Right now, he felt very much as he was: an very old, very tired being who had no idea where his children were, and had no real hope of ever finding out.  
  
It was almost a relief when Kokab burst in, looking like the devil himself was on her tail. Almost. He’d met the Devil exactly once, and it was not an experience that he was keen to repeat.  
  
“What-”  
  
“Zira,” Kokab gasped out.  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
Instead of answering right away, Kokab snapped, summoned a glass of water, and drank it straight down.  
  
“Zira,” Kokab repeated, once she could speak again. “He finally made it down to Hell. He didn’t Fall, but I don’t have any more details than that. I just know that he’s there, he’s finally out.”  
  
Gadri gaped at her. “Are you sure?”  
  
“ _Yes._ Now, we’re all going. How soon can you wrap things up here?”  
  
“If we’ll be gone for less than a fortnight? I can get everything battened down in about an hour or so. Where are we heading down from?”  
  
“Jerusalem portal. The one from under the ophel where Solomon’s palace once stood. It seemed appropriate. Don’t dawdle too much. I’ve still got to go dig up Az and Uzza, they’re trying to revive some kind of peasant revolt in the Alpujarras, but they’re the last on my list.”  
  
“I won’t,” Gadri promised, and Kokab was gone again before he could say anything else.  
  
Not that he knew what else he could say.  
  
_Zira_. He’d been up there for longer than any of them- if anyone had heard anything about their children, it would be him.  
  
And even if he hadn’t, it would be good to see him again.


	14. Chapter 14

Aziraphale didn’t get dressed, not right away. He simply sat on the bed, and thought for a very long time.  
  
He tried to think, at least. Clear thoughts, much like identifiable emotions, were difficult to come by. When he did finally manage one, it came with intense mortification.  
  
_I should have known._  
  
It was all very obvious in hindsight: the lack of any collars or brands or uniforms to signify slave status, the lack of any public punishments, the lack of any _private_ punishments. There had been no binding, no busywork, no application of force or threats to make him do anything, or to drive home a point… there was no slavery in Hell, and consequently Aziraphale was no longer a slave. It was the simplest possible explanation, and he’d missed it. Instead, he’d spent his time driving himself batty with his fears that everything was some kind of elaborate mind game and the moment he showed the slightest weakness it would all be yanked out from under him.  
  
Ha. Like he was worth the amount of effort it would take to pull that off.  
  
The mortification burned off quickly, leaving a sort of tired humiliation in its wake. Aziraphale knew how to handle humiliation- the only thing for it was to just get on with it, until there were enough other things to demand his attention that it went away.  
  
It took him a few moments, but eventually he stood and made his way over to the wardrobe. He would dress, as he’d said he would. Then he’d go back to his assigned room, and work until one of the others came to get him, and then he would go out and drink and eat and help tidy up a bit afterwards and then he would return here and do it all over again. It was the same set of things he had been doing, these past few weeks, he’d just be doing it now while cognizant of the fact that he was no longer enslaved.  
  
He paused, not quite finished with selecting his outfit for the day. He was no longer enslaved.  
  
What did that even mean, practically speaking?  
  
Oh, he had a good idea of what it meant to the others, in terms of how they treated him. They’d known the truth all along, and had been acting accordingly. But what did that mean in terms of what Aziraphale could do?  
  
Could he sleep? Not just for a few hours- could he spend an entire day sleeping, not being at work? Could he just up and leave the Archives and work somewhere else? Could he return to Earth, even?  
  
He’d scarcely been back to the place since the Flood- just to Sodom, the one time, and to Gilead, the other- and he couldn’t help but wonder how the place was coming along. Oh, he read the reports, both here and in Heaven, but he of all people knew how misleading reports could be.  
  
Heaven still didn’t know the whole story about his sword. They still thought he’d lost it accidentally, rather than deliberately giving it away. No one in Hell had asked about it, Adam and Eve were presumably somewhere in the human portion of Heaven where no angel ever went, so that just left himself and Crowley who knew the truth.  
  
Crowley.  
  
There were quite a lot of thoughts to be had involving the demon. They crowded together and broke into fragments before Aziraphale could quite think them, and so he shoved the whole matter aside to be dealt with later, lest he be overwhelmed by the maelstrom.  
  
He took a deep breath. Clothes. An outfit. He could manage that much.  
  
He dressed, and splashed a little water on his face, and opened the door. Crowley was on the other side of it, fist raised as though to knock.  
  
“Oh,” they both said.  
  
For a long, awkward moment, that was all either of them said or did.  
  
“I was just headed to work,” Aziraphale said. “But-”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Crowley interrupted him. “I mean- the others are planning to ambush you there. Well, not _ambush_ you ambush you, but I thought it might feel a bit ambush-y to have Beelzebub, Dagon, Hastur and Ligur just kind of show up at your work, so I came to warn you.”  
  
“Oh! Yes, that’s- thank you. That’s very kind,” Aziraphale said inanely.  
  
“Thanks,” Crowley replied. “I try.”  
  
There was another awkward silence, while Crowley scuffed at the floor with their shoe.  
  
“Well, I was just headed off to work now, actually,” Aziraphale said. “Do you- that is, I presume they wish to discuss yesterday’s...” He trailed off, not entirely sure how to end that sentence. _Revelations_ didn’t seem like quite the right word when it was only himself that hadn’t known what was going on.  
  
“They’re more concerned with what went wrong _before_ yesterday, I think,” Crowley told him. “As far as anyone can tell, you just slipped through the cracks. You should have gotten the full introduction we give to anyone who was formerly a slave in Heaven, but you were being fast-tracked like you were a defector with Earthly experience, so they skipped a few important bits.”  
  
Aziraphale wasn’t sure what he could say to that- everything he thought of was terribly rude. “Yes, they did rather?” he tried, and then winced.  
  
Crowley, however, threw back their head and laughed. “You know what?” they said. “You’re going to be just fine. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re going to be just fine.”  
  
“Yes. Well,” Aziraphale huffed. “I- I do have to be headed to work. I’m sure the ambush is going to take some time, and we’re already some hours past when I would normally start working.”  
  
“Oh, I’ll walk you,” Crowley offered. “I mean, if you’d like-”  
  
“I would,” Aziraphale said. “Oh, I mean- actually, I did mean exactly that, I would like it.”  
  
Crowley grinned. It was bright and sharp, and it landed heavily somewhere in the neighborhood of his sternum. For one horrible moment, Aziraphale thought he’d come across some limit to his bindings, before he remembered that he was no longer bound.  
  
He would probably never be bound again. No awl through his ear, no chant burning through him, no terror every time he came across a limit and knew he had to cross or disobey, no handlers, no any of it. It should have been a comfort. For some reason, when he thought of it, it terrified him. And in the next minute, the terror… not passed, exactly, but lessened. Muffled, as though a wall had been erected around it.  
  
“Shall we?” Crowley said, sweeping their arm out into the hall. They didn’t seem to have noticed his moment of… whatever that was.  
  
“Let’s,” Aziraphale managed to reply, and left his room.

There had always been a seductive ease to being with Crowley. There had always been something about them that allowed Aziraphale to forget, if only for a few moments, all the expectations he was failing to live up to. That wasn’t gone, not entirely, but it was changed: it now felt less like ease, and more like panic being held at bay.  
  
“I’ve read your reports,” Aziraphale said, because even the thought of silence was unbearable. “Well, some of them, at least. The Earth’s still wriggling along, then?”  
  
“Yep! It’s wriggling like anything,” Crowley replied. “More humans now than I ever thought there would be.”  
  
“Yes, I’d noticed,” Aziraphale said.  
  
Crowley gave him a funny look.  
  
“I mean, there are a lot of human souls down here- and as I understand it, there are even more on ice, so to speak,” Aziraphale explained. “It’s really quite invigorating. The human souls in Heaven have their own special area, there’s not a whole lot of mingling between the two groups. I hadn’t spoken to anyone besides other angels in thousands of years, before I came here.”  
  
“Huh,” Crowley said. “I would have thought they would have made some move to have everyone mix in preparation for Judgement Day. Group cohesion and all that.”  
  
Aziraphale shrugged. “I think they’re more concerned with making sure they have the right caliber of person, I think. The rest will flow out of that, I suppose.”  
  
“I can see where the theory might come from, but I doubt it will work like that. It’s one thing to know about other people in an abstract way, and another thing entirely to actually know other people. Edges need smoothing over, allowances have to be made, differences hashed out..”  
  
“I don’t think there are meant to be any differences,” Aziraphale replied, though even as he said it, he knew it to be untrue. Even Avital and Rotem, who had belonged to the same religion and grown up within a stone’s throw of the other’s hometown, had differences ingrained into them by the passage of time that had caused a misunderstanding or two.  
  
“Well, that will be a nasty shock for whoever’s in charge,” Crowley said, a wry little smile playing at their lips. “Hopefully, it’ll be about as pleasant for them up there as this has been for you.”  
  
“Well, it’s not like it has been _un_ pleasant for me here,” Aziraphale demurred. “I meant what I said earlier. I haven’t been treated unkindly.”  
  
“You haven’t been treated as you should either,” they argued. “Someone should have been looking out for you all this time. You shouldn’t have had to be facing this alone.”  
  
“I shouldn’t need someone to hold my hand and point out the obvious,” Aziraphale stated.  
  
“Yeah, you should,” Crowley told him. Aziraphale looked at them askance. “What?” they asked. “You should. It takes time to recover from having some cockwaffle treat you like property, and everything seems off-kilter at best while you’re trying to get yourself back together. You need help. Everyone does.”  
  
“Might I ask a question?” Aziraphale requested, and tried not to wince at his own words.  
  
“Yeah,” Crowley replied after a beat. “Of course. Big fan of asking questions, me.”  
  
“How long did it take for you?” Aziraphale asked. “To get yourself put back together?”  
  
Crowley was silent for a moment. “The first thing you have to understand is that you’re not going to feel like you’re the same person you were before. Or, at least, it’s very, very unlikely,” they said at last. “I know I’m not.”  
  
_Yes, you are,_ Aziraphale wanted to protest, but bit his lip instead.  
  
“I don’t know of anyone who is, no matter how long they were enslaved for,” Crowley continued. “I mean, all of Hell changed after Solomon, I actually like working here now, it’s absolutely _insane_.”  
  
“Ah yes, I can see why enjoying one’s work might be discombobulating,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Ha!” Crowley threw back their head and barked the syllable at the ceiling. “Anyway, accounting for the fact that I don’t feel the same… I think I started to feel like I was myself again around fifty years or so after the fact?”  
  
“Ah,” said Aziraphale. Crowley had been enslaved for twenty-five years, they said. So, assuming that their experiences were proportional, Aziraphale only had roughly five thousand years to go before he was a functional being once more.  
  
“There isn’t a set time table for this,” Crowley told him, as apparently his line of thought had been all too obvious. “It took me fifty years. Ashtoreth and Namaah seemed to shrug it off in less than ten. It took Hastur five centuries at least to get to where he is now. We all go at our own pace.”  
  
“Is there- is there any way to tell whether you’ll end up needing closer to ten years, rather than closer to five hundred?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Not with any certainty,” Crowley admitted. “Having people you can rely on helps, though. The Watchers would all cluster together whenever one of them Fell, and they all ended up on the shorter end of things.”  
  
People had been telling him that the Watchers would be eager to have him back for weeks now. For the first time, it sunk in that they had gone through, if not the same process he found himself poised to go through now, then a very similar one. It suddenly seemed like a very real possibility that his old friends were, in fact, his friends still, and wouldn’t look at him as an object of pity or scorn.  
  
“What are communication privileges like down here?” he asked.  
  
Crowley frowned. “Communication privileges?” they repeated.  
  
“Yes. I mean, if I wanted to- I’d like to get a message to the Watchers. We were all arrested at the same time, we were imprisoned together for two thousand years, and it wasn’t until slavery kicked in that we began to be separated. I’d like to tell them that I’m here. Is there some sort of clearance I need, or-”  
  
“Nah,” Crowley told him. “We’ve got a postal service that’s open to the public. You’d have to ask somebody else about that, though. I only really use it to send my reports on down, so I’m not sure how it works on this end. Dagon will know.”  
  
“Oh,” Aziraphale replied. “That’s convenient, and-” He wasn’t sure how to end that sentence. _How is this Hell?_ he wanted to ask. This was the place where the souls of the damned went to be tormented for all eternity. It was the place he’d feared and he’d clung to that fear quite tightly in Heaven, when things had been bad. He'd _known_ it had to be worse down here. Finding out that he hadn't known much of anything at all was not particularly pleasant.   
  
“I mean, there’s probably a line for days,” Crowley told him. “There generally is, when it comes to public services like that.”  
  
“Yes, well, it’s like that in Heaven too, sometimes,” Aziraphale said. “Quite often, as a matter of fact.” Those of greater rank could cut to the head of the queue, of course, and to Aziraphale’s recollection no one had ever failed to do so. It had made some of those short-term contracts he’d served out with angels from the Second Sphere on his public use cycles terrifying: a lower-ranked angel was perpetually being denied access to the services they needed, and was therefore generally inclined towards either taking out their frustrations on him, or using him to gain enough favor that they could jump the queue themselves. Either option had been unpleasant at best for him.  
  
“You could probably get Dagon to write you an expedite slip, though,” Crowley continued. “They fucked up, and you need support. Though, honestly, you might not need one, I think new arrivals are allowed a free pass to contact anyone they know who preceded them Downstairs anyway.”  
  
“Oh,” Aziraphale said, thinking back to his first beer at The Broken Shaft, and even on his first day down here, when he’d been seen immediately by the healer. “Is that a thing when it comes to services? New arrivals get their first something free?”  
  
“It’s not a _rule_ , I don’t think,” Crowley said. “Hell’s still not very big on actual rules. But a lot of people do it. It’s the convention. It’s a good thing too! We’ve got to have something to help people adjust. At this point I think the number of people who’ve Fallen or defected after the War is up to about a third of the people who Fell during it.”  
  
“Really? That’s- I had no idea there were so many,” Aziraphale said. The Fallen weren’t spoken of in Heaven, except in the most general terms, as a collective warning to those of them who still held their Grace. Once an angel Fell- and very often before that, from when they were enslaved- no one would say anything about them specifically at all. To the best of his knowledge, no one ever kept track of how many Fell, but for there to be so many…  
  
Heaven had felt empty, after the War. It was one of the reasons why he’d been so eager to accept the Eden assignment. It hadn’t felt any emptier after slavery, but maybe it was just the sense that everyone was always watching him, waiting for a reason to hurt him, that made it feel that way.  
  
At any rate, they’d arrived at the Archives. They stood outside of it for a moment, regarding the entrance.  
  
“Would you like me to go with you?” Crowley asked.  
  
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“You wouldn’t be. I don’t have anything in particular on besides a general make trouble directive for the next few years at least,” Crowley replied.  
  
“Oh, yes, well, I-” But he couldn’t quite bring himself to impose upon Crowley. Just because they didn’t have a specific workload at the moment didn’t mean that they wanted to deal with his problems indefinitely. He might as well let them go now.  
  
“Tell you what,” Crowley said, after a moment. “Hastur and Ligur are staying down here for a few months. If you need anything, go to them.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded.  
  
“And when I head back to Earth, I’ll see if I can’t dig one of the Watchers up and let them know you’re here. I’m pretty sure I know where Kokab is, at least. Well, I know she’s mucking about somewhere in the Songhai Empire. The University of Timbuktu is still going, right?”  
  
“I have no idea,” Aziraphale admitted. “I hadn’t known it existed, until just a moment ago.”  
  
“Well, I’ll figure something out,” Crowley said. “And I’ll let her know, okay?”  
  
“Thank you,” Aziraphale said.  
  
They stood there for another moment, before Aziraphale squared his shoulders. “Well. Mind how you go, then,” he said, and then he marched himself inside.


	15. Chapter 15

Armageddon was still in the works, of course.

For Heaven, it was the same old celestial harmony that they had all been singing these past fifty-five hundred years. They were Right: the first and faithful children of the one true God, and therefore favored. They would win, and the destruction (of evil) they wrought would be beautiful to behold.

Hell had never been particularly harmonious, and since the death of Solomon the number of voices and opinions had only grown sharply. But right now the most popular opinion was that it was to be a war of liberation, freeing Earth and all the souls contained therein from Heaven’s tyranny- and perhaps even freeing those held in bondage in Heaven itself.

Not that they were going to ever tell Heaven about that. They wouldn’t have understood it even if they had told them, not under their present administration. Many in Hell found that funny, in a vindictive sort of way. Let Heaven keep their dichotomies: their right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, free and slave, good and evil. It could only cause them to stagnate. Hell would glory in the messy in-between splendor of _living_.

Of course, many in power in Hell recognized that in order to _keep_ living, something would need to be done about Heaven. Hence their faith in Armageddon, and their dedication to not leaving their victory to chance. They might have superior numbers, but with Heaven having deliberately sent many of them to Hell, they could not help but feel like there was something else in the wings- some secret weapon of Heaven’s that they should at least know for sure existed before Judgement Day came upon them.

To that end, there were meetings. Between Gabriel and Beelzebub, yes, but between other demons and angels throughout the years as well.

Some, like Samael and Lilith, ended up with the angel being recruited to Hell. Others merely continued on, meeting at odd intervals to discuss matters, share carefully-chosen bits of intel, and probe for secrets and weaknesses that might be exploited later on.

The longest-standing of these meetings was between Michael and Ligur.

They were cordial meetings, at first. Once upon a time, Michael had been his commanding officer, his liege lord, and sometimes, even, something like an older sister. In turn, Ligur had been her trusted lieutenant, her knight in varicolored armor, and occasionally some kind of younger brother. It had hurt her, that he’d chosen Hastur over her, just as it had hurt Ligur to be asked to make that choice.

They first met in the aftermath of that pain, Michael’s hands bloody from the dismembering demotion of three hundred cherubs, and Ligur’s hands even bloodier from the difficult business of securing a Dukedom for himself and his husband. For a time, they understood one another perfectly.

It wasn’t anything as clean as the death of Solomon that caused the break. It might have been kinder if it had. But Ligur had a lot to deal with in the aftermath of that. All of Hell was in turmoil, and his Dukedom was no exception- and his husband, normally the one being in all of Creation upon whom he could rely, was grievously injured and unlikely to recover soon. There was no one watching his back, and there was no one he wanted to turn to for help, but help he needed nevertheless. 

He knew that Heaven had looked down at the demons being enslaved and let it be- and worse, began to adapt such practices for use in Heaven. He knew that Heaven had gotten custody of Solomon’s soul. But he was tired, and stressed, and when Michael told him that she hadn’t known, that she had little control over the current state of affairs in Heaven he believed her, because in that moment it was easier to trust her, just a shadow of the way he had trusted her before the Fall, then to have one more thing taken from him.

The illusion shattered roughly a century later, when an angel Fell from Heaven- the first of the angels enslaved by Heaven to Fall. Her name had been Yeratel, once. She had yet to pick a new one as of her debriefing, but would later select the name “Malta” in honor of her new teeth, which were actually a series of proboscises.

“I have information,” she spat, or tried to. It came out as more of a buzz, not unlike Beelzebub’s way of speaking when angered. “About the Archangel Michael.”

Michael had been her owner, apparently, when she Fell. It quickly became obvious that she hadn’t been a kind master, that her callous treatment was why this particular angel had Fallen.

Dagon took point on her debriefing, which was a good thing, because all Ligur was capable of doing was listening and seething. He was off like an arrow the moment the meeting let out. They had ways of getting in touch with one another, he and Michael, to call for a meeting in the event of an emergency. This was an emergency. He was going to arrange to meet Michael at some out of the way locale, and then he was going to demand answers from her until she begged for discorporation, and then-

Beelzebub caught him by the neck and tossed him, none too gently, into a nearby chair. “Where, exactly, do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

She talked him down. When he next met Michael it was at her behest, and he didn’t let on that he knew anything more about Heaven than what she told him.

Ligur’s questions to Michael went unasked, though the bigger questions about the nature of good and evil, specifically when Heaven itself was so clearly evil even the demons of Hell wanted nothing to do with it, eventually found voice within the Dark Council. To his surprise, he wasn’t the first to ask such questions. No one was ever able to come up with a more satisfactory answer than “fuck this, fuck Heaven, fuck the Almighty, and fuck what they say we’re supposed to be”, which, in truth, wasn’t a bad answer for a bunch of demons looking for a reason to do the right thing to latch on to.

Time passed, meetings and questions both asked and unasked acting as escorts to the secrets binding them together.

Secrets like: the growing sense of community in Hell, of humans and demons and angels alike coming together and building a place that wasn’t so bad to be.

Secrets like: as the demons came around to the idea of treating others with compassion and patience, they also came around to the idea that they deserved to be treated with such things themselves.

Secrets like: how the scared and scarred newly Fallen made the rest of them feel they’d gotten off easy.

Secrets like: sometimes Ligur went off and tried it, disguised himself as a human and tried being a slave so he could _understand_ , and he never lasted much more than a day before something terrible would happen and he’d call an end to the whole thing with extreme prejudice.

Secrets like: sometimes Ligur came back from a meeting with Michael and went straight to bed, and sometimes, when he’d been having a shit day too, Hastur would still be lying in it from when he’d left.

Those were the sort of secrets kept in Hell, at least. The secrets of Heaven were another matter entirely.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate!

_You’re not being punished_ , Aziraphale reminded himself sternly for the umpteenth time. _They’re not even criticizing you, they’re giving you crucial information that you should have gotten weeks ago, and you need to pay attention._  
  
It should have been an easy thing to remember. He was seated, not kneeling. He wasn’t alone: the other archivists were seated with him- Avital had even taken his hand again- and Hastur and Ligur, lurking off to the side, gave off the strong impression of being with him as well. Beelzebub and Dagon weren’t angry as they spoke; they’d even apologized to him. He wasn’t being hurt. No one had hurt him in weeks.  
  
Still, there was a large part of him that wished he could simply apologize for the inconvenience, take whatever blows were given to him, and get back to work. An even larger part of him worried about how much time this was taking- he’d missed nearly a full day’s work. Which was silly, he knew- he always gave himself plenty of extra time, and if he skipped a day or two of helping the others and going out for drinks after then he’d be able to make up the difference easily- but…  
  
But did he even have to do that?  
  
Dagon was going over how the market worked down here. It was favor-based, same as in Heaven, only value wasn’t measured against Grace or whatever it was that demons used to power their miracles, nor did it seem to be compounded by rank. There didn’t seem to be any objective way of measuring value, only a subjective value determined between the two parties negotiating the exchange. There were several standing agreements between establishments, the benefits of which would be felt by anyone who worked for them. That was why Dagon had pointed out all those taverns and coffeehouses: those establishments had an arrangement with the Archives, and would give him free food and/or drink as payment for the information Dagon provided them.  
  
Which should have been fascinating- _was_ fascinating, truly- but it didn’t really answer the fundamental questions of how and why he was here. There had to be some reason. Heaven wasn’t in the practice of having an Archangel drop slaves off in Hell- and if he wasn’t to be a slave here, as seemed to be the case, then he’d become _de facto_ the first slave freed by Heaven upon being dropped. Not that Heaven was aware of that, in all likelihood. They would have never have let him go if they’d known it would have ended up like this, sitting with people who might qualify as his friends, with a job he enjoyed doing, access to as much food and drink as he could want, and not so much as a bruise on him. They would never have let any of them go- they’d have found a way to prevent slaves from Falling, he was sure of it.  
  
It also didn’t tell him what was permissible. There would be… not bounds, precisely, and maybe not much the denizens of Hell would think of as rules, but there would still be limits. Things that were acceptable, things that were not. Consequences for failing to fall into line.  
  
He’d been free, when he’d been demoted. Slavery hadn’t even been invented yet. That hadn’t protected him from _consequences_.  
  
For a moment, his wings- the second set he hadn’t actually had for more than five thousand years- itched. There was a toothache in his lion’s head, and dull pounding in the horns of his oxen face, and something caught in his eagle’s throat, none of which actually existed anymore. He suppressed the urge to grimace, and let the phantom pains pass.  
  
“I have some questions, Lord Dagon,” he said, once Dagon paused in their speech. “May I ask?”  
  
They blinked at him, eyelids closing vertically instead of horizontally, and then leaned back. “Go ahead,” they told him.  
  
“Thank you,” Aziraphale said. He took a deep breath, and tugged his hand free of Avital’s so he could place it in his lap with his other, fingers laced together. “Am I allowed to leave?”  
  
To their credit, Dagon made no mention of the ingratitude implied by the question. “Leave this conversation, leave your employment by the Archives, or leave Hell?”  
  
“Any of those? All? If you wouldn’t mind.” Aziraphale replied, trying not to squirm. Next to him, the other archivists turned to look at him, and he hastened to add “I’m not saying that I want to leave any of it, I mean! I simply wish to know what my options are.”  
  
“If you get overwhelmed, you can ask us to put this on hold. It’s not going to do anyone any good if you don’t actually understand any of the information we’re telling you,” Dagon told him. “But you really needed to have had this talk when you arrived and now you’re a bit behind- which is our fault, and not yours- so my recommendation is to try to push through as much as you can.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded. He did want this over with. Having this many people pay attention to him was a bit nerve-wracking and he was not keen to go through it again any time soon.  
  
“As for the Archives,” they paused, seeming to consider their words. “I would prefer you didn’t. You’re extremely good at this job. In particular, your indexes are gorgeous.”  
  
Aziraphale, who had never thought of his indexes in terms of beauty, blushed. “Oh. Thank you?”  
  
“But if you really want to leave, I can’t stop you,” Dagon continued. “The wait down at the employment office is roughly a month to get an advocate, last I checked. You can try to secure another post on your own, but I don’t advise that, especially not now. You’re new, and transfers are the sort of thing that can involve a lot of specialized knowledge to go smoothly even if you’ve been through the process before.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded. That sounded sensible.  
  
“And as for Hell,” they paused again, for far longer than they had for the Archives.  
  
Eventually, Beelzebub finished the sentence for them. “One day, you’ll have to.”  
  
Aziraphale hadn’t expected that. “I will?”  
  
“You’re not Fallen, Aziraphale,” Beelzebub said. “Long-term, staying in Hell will cause you harm.”  
  
“It will?” Aziraphale asked, trying not to yelp the question. He was just beginning to come around to the idea that he was safe here. He didn’t want to leave, he suddenly realized. He just wanted to know whether or not he could.  
  
“You couldn’t have told him that?” Ligur drawled, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“We’ve learned the hard way that it’s better to let the symptoms show first. Otherwise people tend to go bothering Clauneck every other day, waiting for something to go wrong,” Dagon replied.  
  
“What- what are the symptoms?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Tiredness, weakness, lack of energy,” Beelzebub listed off. “Vertigo, blurred vision, difficulty focusing. The symptoms get worse, the longer you remain in Hell without replenishing yourself.” She turned pointedly to Ligur and Hastur. “Generally we wait until they’re bad enough to seek out medical attention before breaking the news.”  
  
Ligur had nothing to say to that, but Hastur laughed bitterly.  
  
“What?” Beelzebub demanded.  
  
“It’s a good job you’re telling him now,” Hastur said. “You’d have been lucky if he passed out somewhere you might stumble across him otherwise.”  
  
There was a moment of silence, and then Beelzebub and Dagon each let out an equally flat sounding “What.”  
  
“Come on, you saw the state he was in when Gabriel brought him down here. Do you really think that was a one-off? Do you think they ever cut him some slack because he was tired or hurt?” He turned a little on the perch he’d made of one of the low-lying bookshelves that lined the walls and caught Aziraphale’s eyes. “No one wants to hear your whinging, am I right?”  
  
“As a general rule, yes,” Aziraphale replied. Of course, sometimes they’d wanted him to describe his pain in graphic detail, but never when he had other duties to perform.  
  
“You’d have hidden it, then. You certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it to anyone, much less sought out help,” Hastur surmised.  
  
“More than likely,” Aziraphale admitted with a wince. “Actually I- I probably would have assumed you were doing it,” he said apologetically to Dagon.  
  
“What,” Dagon said again.  
  
“It sounds like what you’re describing is a Grace siphon,” Aziraphale explained. “It’s something a handler is entitled to do to their slaves, not that it happens particularly frequently. Angels of the first sphere have vast reserves of power all their own, and angels of the second sphere need permission before attempting any miracle of sufficient magnitude to require the use of someone else’s Grace. It _has_ happened though.” The Quartermaster, Chayyliel, had used the extra power Aziraphale provided him with to give whichever soldiers were rotated under his tutelage a run for their money. Remiel and a few of the second sphere angels had done it seemingly because they preferred him to be weakened. Gabriel had nearly killed him when he used Aziraphale’s Grace to help him reveal the Quran to Muhammad. It had felt like it was killing him, at least. “I’d have assumed you were siphoning off my Grace for whatever reason, and taken your not speaking of it as my cue to likewise not speak of it and continue on as normal as much as possible until I collapsed.” He smiled apologetically. “In Heaven it really did tend to go better if you didn’t make a fuss over such things.”  
  
Dagon squinted at him. “How did you work like that?” they demanded.  
  
Aziraphale shrugged, and looked down at his hands. “I wasn’t always required to work- not as a primary duty, at least. I was meant to be whatever my handlers made of me. Sometimes that meant being in pain.” He bit down on his lip, and then looked back up. “How long do I have?”  
  
“The symptoms generally start becoming noticeable about a year after an angel settles in Hell,” Beelzebub said. “It takes longer for them to become debilitating. Sometimes as long as a decade.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded.  
  
“You wouldn’t have to leave Hell permanently,” Dagon added. “Most angels find they only need a few days out of the month. I was going to recommend that you take research trips- visit Earth and find a few books for the Archives, and so on.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded again.  
  
“You don’t have to decide now,” Hastur advised. “I mean, don’t wait until you’re ready to collapse either, but you don’t have to decide right now.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded again. It all made sense. He wasn’t being punished. He still wanted this conversation _done_. “What else is there?” he asked.  
  
Beelzebub and Dagon exchanged looks.  
  
“That’s probably enough for now,” Dagon said finally. “If you have questions about something, ask. And Aziraphale? Don’t worry about the room this week. I won't give you another assignment until the end of the next one.”  
  
They were trying to be kind, Aziraphale knew. They were giving him time to come to terms with things. In all honesty, he would have preferred to have an excuse to bury himself in his work and not have to talk with anyone, or show himself in public.  
  
Good Lord, but he’d made an absolute spectacle of himself last night, hadn’t he?  
  
“Thank you, Lord Dagon,” he said anyway. He didn’t wish to be rude on top of oblivious.  
  
The Fallen left shortly thereafter- Hastur looked like he still had something to say, but Ligur pulled him along after him- leaving him alone with his human coworkers.  
  
“Will you be alright?” Muhammad asked.  
  
“He will be,” Avital replied for him, after a moment. “You will be,” she said to him, in a tone that brooked no argument.  
  
“Need a minute to yourself?” Milithe asked.  
  
“Yes. I- thank you, yes,” Aziraphale replied.  
  
“Are you still coming out drinking with us tonight?” Muhammad asked.  
  
“I...” Aziraphale trailed off. He didn’t want to disappoint them, but he wasn’t sure he was going to be fit for public appearances for a while yet.  
  
“How about we just stick our heads in here on our way out and see how you’re feeling then?” Rotem suggested.  
  
Aziraphale forced himself to relax. This was a reprieve. Reprieves were a good thing. “Yes, that- that might be best, I think.”  
  
Avital reached over and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “You’re going to be fine,” she told him. “Come and find one of us if you need company.”  
  
“And tell us to sod off later if you don’t need company,” Milithe added.  
  
Aziraphale dredged up a smile from somewhere. “I’ll take that under advisement.”  
  
Then they too left him alone.  
  
For a while afterwards he merely breathed, concentrating on the way the lungs of his corporation expanded and contracted until all else faded away. It was nice, that quiet. Aziraphale stayed in it for a while.  
  
Inevitably, thoughts began to intrude. The first one was: _Five hundred years, Crowley said. I can’t imagine what it must have taken not to simply give up._  
  
Hastur plainly hadn’t given up, not if he was able to perch himself on one of the bookshelves and point out Aziraphale’s inability to look out for himself.  
  
He took another slow, deep breath. No, that hadn’t been it- or, at least, that hadn’t been his only point, nor his main one. The point was that they had narrowly averted, if not a catastrophe, then a grand inconvenience.  
  
He could picture it all too well. He really wouldn’t have mentioned it to Dagon, nor anyone else for that matter. He probably would have come to the conclusion that he was being punished, and tried to self-correct: stop taking breaks from work, or changing his clothes, even. He’d have done anything he could to stop anyone from noticing his weakness. He’d have been afraid that someone would see it as an opportunity to press their advantage over him, or perhaps worse, that they were spying on him for Dagon, letting them know how he was slipping.  
  
He’d have stopped trusting them: Muhammad, Avital, Rotem, Milithe. He wouldn’t have been able to trust _anyone_.  
  
He shivered, and was glad to have missed that experience.  
  
Of course, he still had a great many questions. Not the least number of which revolved around the fact that Dagon and Beelzebub were clearly holding something back from him still. He didn’t blame them, of course, it was probably a good idea considering how things had gone thus far, but he still wanted to know what it was.  
  
He took another deep breath. He needed to do _something_ , if he didn’t want to lose whatever composure he had left. He eyed the door dubiously, not feeling particularly keen on leaving just yet either.  
  
After a moment he snapped, and manifested ink, quill, and parchment. After a moment’s consideration he snapped again, and the parchment became a diary. Jophiel used to do something similar- she would, the last two times she’d been his handler, keep a diary near her at all times, so she could jot down ideas as they came. Aziraphale wasn’t much one for _ideas_ , exactly, but he had a lot of questions.  
  
One per page, he decided. He’d put the answers beneath them as they came, and then if he ever felt like the world was spiralling out of control he could look back at them and hopefully gain some perspective.  
  
He dipped his quill into ink, and then set it to paper, and began to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: in my original outline, Aziraphale spent a good while longer not realizing he was free, and did indeed work until the point of collapse.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, and Happy Valentine's Day! Please enjoy this offering of Hastur POV.

It took Hastur a couple of days to track the kid down.  
  
(That whole sentence was ridiculous. For one thing, they were all created in the same time-before-time, so there were no kids here. For another, it wasn’t like he was looking for the guy for days. He spent three days in his chambers, seated on his ducal throne next to Ligur, hiding the way putting any pressure on his feet made them flare up in searing pain. It happened, the kind of pain, whenever he went from one plane of existence to another, and he’d pushed through the first stirrings of it to deal with the mess Dagon and Beelzebub had made of things with their newest recruit, which only made it worse. Ligur didn’t want him up, and he had a point but Hastur wasn’t going to acknowledge it, so if anyone asked: it took him a few days to track the kid down.)  
  
Aziraphale was almost exactly where they left him, in the same room of the Archives. The main difference was that instead of sitting down looking frail and afraid, he was up and humming to himself as he sorted through the stacks upon stacks of paper with ease. He looked happy.  
  
(Hastur didn’t trust it for a second. If his owners would have expected him to carry on as normal while his Grace was being siphoned off, then there probably would have been plenty of other times where he’d have been expected to act happy while he was actually miserable.)  
  
Ligur knocked on the doorframe as Hastur called out “Oi!”  
  
Aziraphale turned around to face them. There was a moment of something like fear, and a flicker of something like suspicion, but his face was overwhelmingly a mask of pleasant helpfulness. “Oh! Duke Hastur, Duke Ligur. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I need a word with you,” Hastur told him. “Do you have a minute to go on a walk?”  
  
Aziraphale bit his lip and looked around the room. “Well, Dagon did give me an extra week, so-”  
  
“Good. Walk with me.”  
  
He left. Ligur followed, and after a moment of hesitation, so did Aziraphale.  
  
(Of course he fucking followed. You don't say no when someone gives you an order. You know what happens to people who try to say no. You don’t dare say no.)  
  
“You’re going to have to work on that,” he said.  
  
“What?” the angel replied.  
  
“Saying no when people tell you to do something you don’t want to do,” Hastur clarified.  
  
Aziraphale said nothing, but his silence managed to pass an audible judgement.  
  
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s convenient for me right now that you’re not, but in general. You’re going to have to work up to that somehow,” Hastur elaborated.  
  
“I take it that’s not the point of this walk, then?” Aziraphale asked.  
  
“Yep. We’re showing you where the employment office is,” Hastur said.  
  
“I see,” Aziraphale said doubtfully. “Why?”  
  
“Because Dagon might have told you that you’re free to leave- and you are- but they’re sure not lifting a finger to show you how to do that,” Hastur explained. “We’re going to fix that.”  
  
“I have no wish to leave Dagon’s employ,” Aziraphale said stiffly. “I’ve always worked best in the Archives, and I can do the work well.”  
  
“Which is a nice feeling, I’m sure. You know the work, you know you’re doing well, you know you aren’t going to get hurt, and that last part might even be sinking in now. That’s not the same thing as _enjoying_ it.”  
  
“I’m fairly certain I do enjoy it, actually,” Aziraphale said.  
  
“Then you can stay. But if there comes a time when you find that you don’t enjoy it- or even just want to try something else for a time- you should know how to get out.”  
  
Something about that clearly struck a nerve, but Aziraphale didn’t mention it so Hastur didn’t point it out.  
  
(You always know where the exits are. What routes you can take, where and how you can hide. You don’t ever forget that it’s all an illusion, that you’re bound body and soul and can be summoned back with the right word. There’s no escape, really. You truly don’t get out. But you can be out of sight and out of mind for a while, if you’re careful.)  
  
They walked, the three of them. The employment office was in the same circle as the Archives, but a different radial, which made it a pain to get to. At one point Ligur leaned in close and said “You’re sure this is necessary?”  
  
“Yes,” Hastur replied, and that was the end of that.  
  
(Until they got back home, at least. Ligur would want to know, to try to understand, the why of it.)  
  
They reached the employment office after a bit more time than Hastur was really looking to spend on the journey, but never mind that.  
  
“So, this is the employment office,” Hastur said, gesturing towards the building. “If you need a job, this is the place to go. If you decide to go into business for yourself, this is where you get the permits, and if you decide you need help running your business this is where you can post your job offerings.”  
  
Aziraphale made no reply, but Hastur heard a quiet snap, and when he turned around Aziraphale had a journal, ink pot, and quill set on the edge of a nearby stage- deserted for now, but it probably wouldn’t be for very long. For whatever reason, Hell kept ending up with all the best musicians and playwrights and all those artsy creative shits, and artsy creative shits always needed places to perform.  
  
“Are you taking notes?” Ligur asked incredulously.  
  
Aziraphale hunched in on himself a bit, but replied with only a clipped “Yes.”  
  
“Leave it,” Hastur grunted. “Let him.”  
  
Aziraphale scribbled away for a few moments, and then looked up, face expectant.  
  
“Dagon mentioned the advocates, right?” Hastur asked. “Did they ever explain what those are?”  
  
“No. No they did not. Not yet, at least,” Aziraphale replied cautiously.  
  
“Right,” Hastur said. “Not yet. Well, advocates are one of three classes of people that are supposed to help keep things running. Professional bureaucrats, not attached to any department or circle or anything like that. An advocate’s job is to essentially do the fussy work for you when it comes to tricky things like transferring your employment or opening your own business. They help with the paperwork and make sure you’re getting the best deal you can, and they get a cut of the proceeds once it’s done. Questions?”  
  
“Yes, I-” Aziraphale paused, and turned the pages of his journal. “Yes. What are the other two classes?”  
  
“Actuaries and adjuncts,” Hastur replied. “Actuaries get called in for tricky negotiations- big things like expanding one of the circles, or when one party is at a steep disadvantage- and make sure everything is done fairly. Adjuncts are just there to keep records: it’s basically like what you’re doing now. They take notes, draw up contracts, and then lodge them with the Archives.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded, quill moving furiously over the paper.  
  
“I don’t advise hiring either of them if you decide to switch jobs,” Ligur said. “The more people involved the more you’ll owe at the end of it.”  
  
The quill stopped moving for a moment. “And how does that work, exactly? The owing part.”  
  
“You owe your advocate a certain number of favors,” Ligur said. “Generally you agree on what you’ll owe when they agree to work for you, and the favors will be for something related to whatever position you want. Like, let’s say you wanted to, I don’t know, open a bookshop.”  
  
“Could I do that?” Aziraphale demanded, looking up sharply from his writing.  
  
“Yeah? Probably?” Ligur replied, a little taken aback. When the angel didn’t elaborate, he shrugged and moved on. “So, say you want to open a bookshop. An advocate will help you get the property you need and set up your supply lines and so on. And, in return, you would...” Ligur trailed off, looking for Hastur for help.  
  
Hastur shrugged, not knowing any more about books than his husband did.  
  
“One of the favors would probably be something that’s for the public benefit- or at least the benefit of the Advocacy. Something like, I don’t know, letting them run literacy lessons out of your shop for three hours a week, or distribute pamphlets or something, I don’t know. There could be two-to-four other favors, personal ones. A certain number of free books, or letting them know when someone whose writing they like is coming out with something and reserving them a copy, or maybe letting them publish their own writing. It would depend on the person.”  
  
“Is it always like that?” Aziraphale asked. “The… personal favors?”  
  
Ligur looked to him for help again; this time, Hastur knew what he meant.  
  
“No one _should_ ask you for anything unrelated to whatever you’re asking for help with. That doesn’t mean that they _won’t_ , just that they should know better,” Hastur explained. “There was a bit of a situation a couple of decades back where one of the advocates was asking for sexual favors, and generally he was asking people who were made to feel they couldn’t say no.”  
  
(He’d targeted people who were desperate and people who wanted things that weren’t quite under board, yes, but more often than that, he went after people who had come from Heaven or Earth. People who didn’t really expect any better.)  
  
The expression on Ligur’s face cleared as he suddenly understood why Hastur was doing this.  
  
“Ah,” said Aziraphale softly.  
  
“The Advocacy gave him the boot, and then the Dark Council passed their judgement,” Hastur said. “I think he’s still on ice, actually.”  
  
(He’d gotten off easy, in Hastur’s opinion. It wasn’t technically slavery, what he’d done, but it was close enough that he could have very easily been ripped apart by a mob and spent the next millenium being slowly reconstituted, instead of being frozen for a century and then letting anyone who still carried a grudge have a go at him.)  
  
“You can ask Ithuriel for the details. That’s why they left the Advocacy, I think,” he concluded.  
  
“My advice: don’t go with the first advocate who offers their services- at least, not right away,” Ligur added. “Shop around a little. Once you explain what you’re looking for, they’ll quote you their price, and once you decide which one to go with, you can get around to making a compact then.”  
  
Aziraphale nodded, already back to scribbling.  
  
“So! That’s that, then. If you ever decide to leave the Archives, that’s the first steps you can take,” Hastur said. “Any more questions?”  
  
“Yes. Why don’t you trust Dagon to tell me this themself?”  
  
Well fuck. That was a question he’d been hoping to sidestep until later.

He regarded the angel for a moment, trying to figure out how much he could handle. Aziraphale fidgeted, and then shrunk in on himself, and then squared his shoulders a bit and lifted his chin.

“I presume there is a reason,” he said quietly.

“Let me put it this way: do you know why you’re here?”

Aziraphale grimaced and turned away. “Heaven got tired of waiting for me to Fall and decided to take matters into their own hands.”

“Well, I’m glad they see it that way,” Hastur said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Look, you’ve met Beelzebub, right?” Ligur cut in. “Before coming down here, I mean.”

“I- well, it wasn’t exactly. Gabriel used to bring me along to their meetings. It wasn’t- I didn’t really- mostly Gabriel just kind of dangled me and- and my services before her and she proceeded to ignore me utterly. We hardly got to know one another. We barely spoke.”

“Glad Michael never did that,” Ligur muttered.

Hastur took back over from him for a moment before turning back to Aziraphale. “Well, I don’t know what you said, but it impressed her. It gave her the impression that you knew a lot about how Heaven operated- that you had information we could use here in Hell: things you knew, that they didn’t quite understand that you knew.”

“Especially with the War coming up,” Ligur added.

That struck a chord, Hastur could tell.

“So, she did her thing with Gabriel, got him to convince Heaven to throw you down here while thinking it was all his idea, and they’re keeping you in the Archives so they can gently pump you for information,” Ligur finished.

Aziraphale looked anxious. “I don’t know that I- I mean, I was certainly there for a lot of those planning meetings, but so were a lot of slaves, most of whom Fell before I arrived and some that undoubtedly will after, so I don’t think, I...” His voice trailed off and he gave his head a shake before turning to Ligur. “I’m sorry, are you the demon Michael’s been meeting with?”

“Yes?” Ligur said. “Did she mention me?”

“Not by name. Well, not by your real name, at least,” Aziraphale said with a sickly smile. “You should know. She- Michael, that is- she _wants_ you.”

“Well she can’t have me, I’m married and not really interested in threesomes,” Ligur said with forced levity.

(Ligur didn’t understand. He didn’t get it, how easy it could be for someone who had enough power and the right words to hurt him. How he wouldn’t just be overpowered, he’d be _helpless_. He wouldn’t get the option of fighting back, and neither would Hastur.)

Aziraphale let out a high-pitched sound that might have been a giggle before he strangled it. “Not- not like that. I don’t think she likes _that_ very much.”

Ligur and Hastur exchanged looks.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, she _partakes_ , she just- she doesn't ever seem to enjoy herself during the act and she’s always very angry at the end of it. There’s no pleasing her, she-” Aziraphale cut himself off. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then suddenly went pale enough to give Hastur a run for his money. His eyes flew open. “Oh **Ǧ̸͕́͜o̸̻͒ḑ̶͇̃͗**!”

Hastur hissed in pain as the Name caused flame-hot pins and needles to run up his legs. Ligur also hissed, though not in pain. He lunged towards Aziraphale, who shrank back against the stage.

Ligur stopped, and took a deep breath. “You can’t just say that down here,” he grit out.

(They’d all had a part of the Name once. It had been given to them, a part of the names God had fashioned for them. Whichever part they had was burned out when they Fell. No one ever said any part of the Name aloud any more, whether they still had it or not.)

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, managing to stutter a bit over the sound. “Oh, I- I’m terribly sorry, I- I- didn’t- I wasn’t thinking, I-”

“What,” Hastur interjected. “Made you bless like that?”

“I-” Aziraphale’s hands, held very rigidly by his sides, twitched, and he folded them behind his back. “Now, it’s not- it isn’t anything official. There aren’t any concrete plans, not that I’ve heard about but…”

“But?”

“But there has been a shift. In the way the Archangels talk about Armageddon. It’s been subtle, and slow, and- and I don’t know if very many of the others were around for long enough to notice, it- it might not have registered.”

“Well?’ Ligur asked impatiently. “What is it?”

“When I say that she wants you, I don’t mean that she’s likely to kidnap you,” Aziraphale said. “Probably, I mean, that’s not the impression I got. I- I think the idea is that she would essentially take you as spoils of war, after Heaven won.”

Neither Ligur nor Hastur could think of anything to say to that. Well, Hastur could have said ‘I never liked Michael,’ again, but that never ended well.

“That’s relatively new, you see,” Aziraphale explained nervously. “Just after the War, the idea was that we’d just- seal you away. Keep Hell from being able to influence Earth that way, and so win by default. Then, after Eden, when it became obvious that at least some portion of humanity was going to end up in your care, it was to be a war of annihilation, where we would wipe Hell from existence, essentially. But then- well, they all have favorites amongst the slaves, the Archangels. Every member of the first sphere does, I think, and probably quite a few in the second too. But we Fall, you see. That’s supposed to be the point of it, that all of us who were enslaved are destined to Fall and they’re just limiting the damage we can do on the way down by keeping us contained, but. Well. That does mean that, inevitably, they need to break in someone new to take care of their needs the way they like, and they need to do it multiple times! And then they miss us, in their own way.”

“They miss what you do for them,” Hastur said. He was a little surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth, instead of staying in his head.

“Yes. That,” Aziraphale agreed. “So, at some point, they started to discuss it. To commiserate. And then they started saying things like _Well, it’s not like they’re gone forever_ and _It’s not like we can’t bind them again as demons_ and I just-” He took a deep breath and rocked back on his heels a bit. “Officially, the plan is still annihilation. Unofficially, they’ve been running drills on how to capture demons alive for interrogation for… quite some time. I- I would expect that, sometime after hostilities were commenced, they would be in charge of- of catching demons to be enslaved, even if they weren’t told that. I would guess that the notion of taking demons as slaves would begin to be a matter of public discussion after they’d secured a large enough supply.” He was mumbling by the end of his speech, his shoulders steadily creeping up towards his ears.

Hastur and Ligur were saved from having to reply by the arrival of a group of musicians looking to use the stage they were lurking next to.

“Goodness,” Aziraphale said, snapping away his writing supplies. “That’s an interesting-looking lyre.”

“It’s a kissar,” the instrument’s musician replied.

“Oh, well. It’s lovely, whatever it is.”

Hastur let the words wash over him, before turning to Ligur. Ligur did not look much better than he felt.

“We should- we need to tell her. Probably Dagon too.” If Aziraphale had it right, then they were going to need to adjust their strategies.

“Agreed,” Ligur said. “Let’s just see Aziraphale off and-”

“Oh, I can find my own way back, I’m sure,” Aziraphale told them. “I’d like to stay, for a bit. See the show.”

Hastur looked at him askance.

“I’ve got a very good head for directions,” Aziraphale told him. “Heaven rather forbade getting lost.”

Hastur could believe it. “If you get turned around, ask for help. Seriously.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Aziraphale said, pointedly turning his attention to the stage.

He didn’t quite feel right about leaving him there, but if this was how the angel was going to dig his heels in, then he wasn’t about to drag him away kicking and screaming.

He left with Ligur, hurrying back towards Beelzebub’s palace as quickly as Hastur’s feet would allow.

“Are you okay?” Ligur asked.

“I’m fine,” Hastur growled. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Ligur replied, which was definitely a lie. “I stopped trusting _her_ a while ago.”

Hastur didn’t reply to that. When you’d been married to the same person for thousands of years, there were very few topics you hadn’t at least tried to talk about. When it came to Hastur and Ligur, Michael was at the heart of many of them.

There had been a time, back before the dawn of time, when Hastur had been in custody and slated to Fall and Ligur had merely been under investigation. If he’d denounced Hastur and renounced their bond, it probably would have saved him. Michael had asked him to, and she’d told Hastur about it. She’d been very smug about outlining how Ligur could be spared sharing in Hastur’s fate, because she’d thought that he would be.

Of course, Ligur had chosen Hastur, and they’d Fallen together, and it was a good thing too given how Heaven had surpassed Hell in the torments and terror department, but that didn’t mean that Hastur wasn’t sure that it had been close, that in that moment things could have very easily gone the other way.

Hastur knew all that, though Ligur had never told him. He’d never asked. Neither of them had. It was better for both of them that way.


End file.
